Word: proms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...preparation for her Senior-Prom night, Leah Lott performed the traditional rituals: she got her nails done, she had her sister do her makeup, and she even took a trip to the spray-tanning parlor. Later that evening, she and her boyfriend, Chris Raffo, took pictures at his parents' house. But instead of joining the rest of her classmates at Pearl River Central High School, in Carriere, Miss., for their last big hurrah, Lott and Raffo dined in an Italian restaurant and drove to New Orleans for a quiet evening in the French Quarter. Lott, 18, had desperately wanted...
Setting age limits that label some guests too senior for the prom is only one of the restrictions that school administrators have been imposing on students and their dates this spring. A growing number of schools also screen for alcohol at the door, require teens to sign drug-free pledges, ask parents to consent to their child's choice of date and in some cases even conduct background checks on outsiders invited to the event. The rules have sparked school-board showdowns across the country. Administrators say they just want to keep kids safe. Graduating 17- and 18-year-olds...
...Principals have to be more concerned with security issues," says David Vodila, president of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, who traces the rise in prom vigilance to Sept. 11 and the 1999 Columbine shootings. Some reasons cut closer to home. During prom season, nearly half of teen car-crash deaths are alcohol related, according to a recent study by Nationwide Insurance and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And teacher sexual misconduct can also be a problem. A Tennessee high school set an age limit at the prom this year after a former teacher who had gone to prison...
...opportunity to police themselves," says Nathan Graf, 18, a senior at Cumberland Valley High School in Mechanicsburg, Pa., who got two-thirds of his classmates to sign a petition against a new policy of random Breathalyzer tests at dances. The school board rejected their pleas before the May 12 prom, but Graf will fight on. "Safety is a big concern," he says, "but at what expense to our constitutional rights...
That's the question that six students on Cape Cod, Mass., asked earlier this month when their dates were barred from the prom after criminal background checks turned up past misdemeanors, like underage drinking and marijuana possession. Officials reversed the ruling when the A.C.L.U. challenged the legality of the checks. But some schools nationwide require students to preregister their dates for informal character checks. At Andover High School in Minnesota, guests who come from other schools must be vouched for by their principals, says Andover principal Dan Dehnicke...