NY- The senior prom wasn’t on this year’s Kellenberg Memorial High School calendar, and students soon learned it wasn’t a mistake.
School administrators, reacting to what they called a “sick” prom culture that was out of control, announced in a letter this month to parents that senior prom was canceled.
“Basically, it has become an event in American culture that has all the trappings of excess,” said school principal Brother Kenneth Hoagland. “It is not consistent with our philosophy as a Catholic school.”
The decision was prompted in part by the prom house frenzy of past years, said administrators in the letter. Students pool funds to rent a house in the Hamptons for an overnight post-prom stay that school officials said has devolved into a hyper-MTV orgy. Last year, the school appealed to parents and stopped 46 Kellenberg seniors from spending $20,000 to rent a house for a post-prom weekend in the Hamptons. Administrators said that didn’t stop students from renting houses.
“Nothing changed,” the letter said.
So this year, rather than encourage the “bacchanalian aspects of the prom — alcohol/sex/drugs,” the school opted to simply drop it. “It is so much beyond our control that it is mere tokenism to put our name on it,” administrators said.
Many of the 489 students in the senior class were devastated, but some parents said the school makes a good point.
“I’m not in total disagreement with what they are saying,” said Julianne Grennen of Lynbrook, whose daughter Katherine, 17, is a senior. “I’m sorry they didn’t just cancel that prom last year. But I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world for these kids not to have a prom.”
Some students objected to the school’s approach.
“It’s not the fact that they took the prom itself away,” said senior Robert Lawson, 17, of Levittown. “It’s more the principle that they wouldn’t make a compromise and … they made us sound like we are a bunch of junkies and sex addicts.”
Lawson, with the support of his father, Edward, has launched a campaign to organize a prom that is not school-sanctioned.
“It’s almost like this is uniting us,” Lawson said. “We’re pretty sure we’re going to have a prom on our own.”
Hoagland said they have invited students to come up with alternate ideas for a school-sponsored event that are consistent with the goals of a Christian education.
Senior Katie Ryan, 17, said students just want the chance to celebrate together one last time. “Prom is one of the last things we get to do with our class before graduation,” she said. “We are a good school and we deserve it.”