After the night of my senior Homecoming dance I felt robbed- robbed of valuable memories that I felt I should be in possession of. All week long I had heard both my teachers and my parents share stories from their senior Homecomings, stories all centered around great fun and enjoyment. After hearing these stories, I couldn’t help but hope that my senior Homecoming would be just as memorable.
My hope grew as I proceeded to enjoy Homecoming week with friends. Dressing up on spirit days; decorating the senior girls float for the parade; painting our faces for the football game… it appeared that I was getting what I wanted.
The Saturday of the dance started well enough. My nails were perfect, my hair was done professionally and curly and my red BCBG dress was beautiful. Dinner was delicious, and I was having a great time with my group. I could hardly wait to get to the dance.
Standing in line to get in, I was shocked to see a continuous stream of students leaving. Several of them warned me not to waste my time going in, but I had already bought tickets and I wanted to at least see what everyone was complaining about. As soon as I walked into the gym I saw the problem.
Teachers were sitting in the bleachers with walkie-talkies, spying on us, and reporting anything they thought looked inappropriate to another chaperone on the ground. Due to these people no one felt like they could dance, which, if I’m correct, is the whole purpose of a dance. I didn’t even feel like I could be within a foot of my boyfriend without getting a dirty look from a chaperone.
This isn’t the ‘50s, and I think that needs to be recognized by people that are chaperoning the dances. While some people push the limits with their dancing, grinding shouldn’t be completely prohibited. After all, it is the most common way of dancing to the songs that are played at the dances. I think what needs to happen is compromise- students need to be responsible and make sure they’re not dancing in an overly sexual manner, and chaperones need to keep their expectations for dancing reasonable, by allowing grinding. The dance pledge should also be altered to fit this compromise.
I’ve always loved dances, but after seeing what Homecoming was like, I don’t even want to go to the other dances this year. It makes me sad that these dances, which were such a fun tradition, aren’t fun anymore; and all these dancing enforcements are changing my senior year. Instead of being excited the next time a dance rolls around, it’ll just be a reminder of my awful Homecoming. I’ve become accustomed to being treated like an adult at school; after all, I will be on my own in less than a year, and I find it really dumb that all of a sudden I’m being treated like I’m in middle school again.
Chaperones should to go to dances with an open mind. It needs to be recognized that being controlling and treating us like children isn’t going to make students want to be respectful and follow the rules, and it needs to be recognized before it’s too late for seniors.
