Today’s Ethics Quiz takes on the ethics of high school proms.
Oh, suck it up, girl!
Amanda Dougherty, a high school junior, had a prom date, tickets, an expensive dress and dreams of romance, glamor and life-long memories when her date, for reasons unrevealed to us, had to bale out of the big event too late for Amanda to find a replacement beau. She planned on attending stag, and was shocked when officials at Archbishop John Carroll High School told her she was not allowed to go without a date according to Archdiocese of Philadelphia policy. The office of Catholic Education explained that the school has “numerous dances and events throughout the year where dates are not required, but we view the prom as a special social event where a date is required to attend.”
“She’s been excited (about prom) for a couple of years,” Jack Dougherty, Amanda’s father, told the CBS affiliate in Philly. “She went out around Christmas looking for her dress.” Amanda took a feminist line of attack. “For them to say we’re not good enough to go without a guy next to us, that’s kind of sickening,” she said.
Your Prom Season Ethics Quiz is this: Is the school heartless and overly rigid, or is its decision the right one?
At the risk of causing cardiac arrest to some of you who assume that my low opinion of school administration decision-making and ethical instincts makes this question a gimme, I think the school got it right. The ethics miscreants here are, in turn: Amanda, who played the discrimination card as if a male student who lost his date wouldn’t also be told to stay home, and who is willing to diminish her classmates’ thrills in order to lessen her own disappointment; Amanda’s father, who decided to recruit the media to but pressure on the school; CBS Philadelphia, which abandoned its news judgment to present this as if Amanda was being made to sit in the back of a bus; ; and perhaps Amanda’s AWOL date, if he didn’t have a damn good reason for shattering Amanda’s dreams.
What makes proms special is that they are couples affairs, not just another dance. If the prom were just another dance, Amanda wouldn’t have been so excited about it. Now that she doesn’t have a date, however, Amanda wants to destroy what makes the prom memorable and unique by forcing administrators to abandon its couples only requirement for her benefit. Of course, once they waive the rule for Amanda, they will be forced to waive it for everyone else: full-time onanists, self-worshippers, conjoined twins, iconoclasts, the hideous and unlovable and anyone else with a colorable reason why they don’t have a date. The result: the prom is like any other dance, so there is no prom.
And Marty McFly would have never been born.
The subtext of this controversy is Amanda’s conviction, and her dad’s, that authorities have an obligation to do handsprings to keep us from every disappointment and misfortune. They don’t. Sometimes, you have to just suck it up and accept the fact that you got a raw deal. Amanda shouldn’t have run to CBS to cast her school as the villain because when she chose her prom date, as the ancient Grail Knight said drily in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, she “chose poorly.” She should have asked for refunds on her tickets and dress, and found something else to do on prom night, like thousands and thousands of dateless students have done since the vile things were invented.
If the school is going to have proms, then it obviously should enforce the rules that make it one.
As the Grail Knight would say, Archbishop John Carroll High School chose…wisely.
Ethics Alarms 
What makes proms special is that they are couples affairs, not just another dance.
…
Now that she doesn’t have a date, however, Amanda wants to destroy what makes the prom memorable and unique by forcing administrators to abandon its couples only requirement for her benefit
Uh, what? Proms aren’t special because everyone has a date. They’re special because they’re fancy (tuxes and ballgowns, limos, upscale restaurants) and part of the rite of passage for teens into adulthood. I’d be willing to bet that most of these “couples” at this prom are just friends. I went to prom on a bus with about 40 people. Nearly all of us were “couples” but only maybe a quarter of them were actual couples. Once prom started, there was more dancing with my “date” than with any other specific person, but most of the dancing was groups. How exactly is a single person going to ruin that? The pictures have one girl without a corsage?
I think you’re going a bit “Get off my lawn!” here. You might as well be arguing that gay marriage is going to destroy the institution of marriage.
Nah, I think that’s backwards. It’s a manufactured romantic setting—it’s theater and fantasy. The trappings come only because of the romantic fantasy. The fact that kids go in groups and acknowledge the fantasy doesn’t mean it isn’t crucial. I went to two proms with girls who were friends at most, but the ritual of being a couple at a fancy ball was what made it exciting for those who thought it was exciting.
Personally, I wouldn’t care if there was never another prom, and I also think few guys feel about them the same way women do. So your reaction figures, and, frankly, my first reaction was the same. But That’s why its a quiz, not a declaration.
And if you ever saw my lawn, you’d never use that phrase and me in the same paragraph.
How does the inclusion of the dateless ruin the fantasy? The people who thing it’s exciting to be a couple at a fancy ball can still be a couple at a fancy ball.
Also, the suggestion that guys don’t care about the romantic fantasy of prom but girls do is pretty repugnant, especially since there’s a counterexample in this post.
As to the last point, I call politically correct balderdash. I have never spoken to a guy who cared about a prom, other than the fact that it was good shot at a hot date. Most guys hate dressing up, hate the dancing. There are distinct gender differences, and prom attitudes brink many of them into play.
If singles can go, all singles can go, which means the prom, as I said, is just a bunch of kids in tuxes and gowns. Balls are not stag affairs, in most cases. There are escorts.
Who’s the counter example in the post? Surely not me. If I had cared about proms, I would have asked a girl to go to one. They asked me. (Believe It Or Not!) I did care about their sensibilities enough not to disappoint them, however.
I call PC-backlash and ingrained beliefs. There wasn’t any noticeable difference in enthusiasm for the prom amongst my male and female friends. You’re the one saying there’s a difference between boys and girls, so you’re the one that needs evidence for it, not stupid statements like “Most guys hate dressing up, hate the dancing” implying that most girls like the dressing up and the dancing. You’ve watched too many disney movies. Also, even if it’s technically true that more girls like it than guys, how in the world does that back up your statement that all women like it and only a few men do?
There was no couples requirement at my prom, so, apparently, it was just a bunch of kids in tuxes and gowns devoid of any real meaning. Thanks for that. You’ve just unanimously declared that the tens of thousands of kids that grew up in Howard County in the last couple decades didn’t have the rite of passage experience they thought they had. Considering that it’s news that this prom is couples only, we can safely bump that to millions of kids.
If that’s not enough to see the error in your logic, let me apply my previous parallel directly to what you said:
“If this gay couple can get married, then all gay couple can get married, which means that marriage, as I said, is just a bunch of people dressing up and signing paper. Marriage is not man-man, in most cases. There are two genders involved.”
You’re rationalizing, plain and simple. Prom is what it means to the kids, not what you think is required for all people everywhere.
The counterexample in the post is the girl that thinks that going to prom is more important that the fantasy of going to prom with a guy.
I’m a bit tired of having the same argument: you deny some fairly obvious feature of human nature, because there’s no data established by field studies of something that nobody bothers to research because everyone already knows its true. I know of one men’s fashion magazine, and about 10 women’s, which pretty much shows the relative proportion of women to men who give a damn about dressing up. Purchasers of romantic novels run more than 10-1 female: I wonder why? You can find the research on the differences between how men and women look at realtionships, the higher importance of imagery and romance to women; this stuff was denied in the silly 80’s but gender differences are real. Yeah, I know that lots of schools in kneejerk liberal communities killed couples proms, for the same reason that these communities don’t like to keep score in kids soccer. Getting a date to the prom was a status symbol, but it meant that some kids, the less popular ones, didn’t get to go. OK: make the no couples policy as a reasoned policy change for utilitarian reasons, not to fix the social problems of one girl who wants to change the rules because they didn’t work out for her. Sure, once its dead, kids like you won’t miss it, because there’s nothing to miss: how does that prove your point?
The gay marriage analogy stinks, because gays have a right to marry. Does having same sex marriages “change” marriage? Sure it does. Does it de-romanticize marriage for those who care that its a two gender finish line for true love? I suppose. It doesn’t matter: all people have a right to marry under the Constitution. They don’t have a right to go to their proms stag.
You will note, upon checking, that I never said, or thought, that “all” women cared about proms. The disproof of that is sitting next to me: my wife.
Cam the couple be same-sex?
Of course! That was the 2010 prom ethics mess, when the high school cancelled the prom rather than allow a girl to bring a same sex date. Romance is romance.
I think the Archdiocese of Philadelphia might just have a teeny problem with that. As might the Office of Catholic Education.
Just a guess, mind you.
We don’t have this particular institution in Australia. High School Graduation consists of getting an exam results certificate in the mail. There’s a High School Formal, but usually in the middle of the year, and attendance rarely exceeds 25%.
Last day of school is known as “muck up day”, where a certain number of hijinks are permitted that normally wouldn’t be.
In 1975, we didn’t do anything. Until the last bell, the teachers were waiting with increased trepidation for the other boot to drop. Just another school day, which happened to be the last. Too busy preparing for the exams.
I’m a bit tired of having the same argument: you deny some fairly obvious feature of human nature, because there’s no data established by field studies of something that nobody bothers to research because everyone already knows its true.
Remember when you knew it was true that people should drink 8 glasses of water a day? How about SMP and Proam arguing that predation of boys is different than predation of girls? Just because our culture treats something as true doesn’t mean that it actually is. You sometimes know this, while other times you ignore it.
I know of one men’s fashion magazine, and about 10 women’s, which pretty much shows the relative proportion of women to men who give a damn about dressing up. Purchasers of romantic novels run more than 10-1 female: I wonder why? You can find the research on the differences between how men and women look at realtionships, the higher importance of imagery and romance to women; this stuff was denied in the silly 80′s but gender differences are real.
BS. Cutting edge fashion is not the same as liking to dress up. I’ll give you romance novels, but that doesn’t say anything about what the population at large thinks of the prom. If 10% of women read romance novels and 1% of men do, you can say that more women like them than men, but that’s it. The same goes for fashion magazines. As for relationship research, can you point me to any of it? I haven’t seen any that shows that. What I’ve seen mostly shows that Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus is crap on a stick.
Yeah, I know that lots of schools in kneejerk liberal communities killed couples proms, for the same reason that these communities don’t like to keep score in kids soccer.
Um, no. Not for the same reason at all. Couples proms were killed because they were unnecessarily exclusionary and undesired by the students. Not keeping score in kids soccer is because parents don’t want their precious snowflakes to ever know they’re not perfect.
Also, calling Howard County kneejerk liberal is pretty entertaining to me.
Sure, once its dead, kids like you won’t miss it, because there’s nothing to miss: how does that prove your point?
“there’s nothing to miss” kind of nails it. It’s an unnecessary requirement that doesn’t serve any purpose.
The gay marriage analogy stinks, because gays have a right to marry.
What right?
Does having same sex marriages “change” marriage? Sure it does. Does it de-romanticize marriage for those who care that its a two gender finish line for true love? I suppose.
If by change, you mean, stop being discriminatory, then I agree. Of course, that’s not what we’re talking about. Does it change the experience for any of the straight couples that want straight marriage? Absolutely not, just like how allowing singles into the prom does not change the romantic prom fantasy for anyone who wants the romantic prom fantasy.
It doesn’t matter: all people have a right to marry under the Constitution.
How do you see that? Because it would be discriminatory otherwise? Like couples proms are discriminatory against the asexual? Are you saying that stupid rules are okay so long as they don’t discriminate against most people? Or because people can get around them? Once you’ve granted fake couple couples are allowed at the prom, you no longer had a consistent argument.
You will note, upon checking, that I never said, or thought, that “all” women cared about proms. The disproof of that is sitting next to me: my wife.
“[…]I also think few guys feel about them the same way women do.”
You didn’t use the word “all”, but the words you used have the same meaning.
Yes, l attended three Proms—two at my own high school, and one as the date of a girl who went to a different school—and for pretty much the reasons you mentioned, Jack. Well, I also went because it WAS a major social event and the tribal instinct is especially strong in high school. But, I certainly agree that girls are more heavily into Prom than guys . Considering the expense, especially since I had to pay my own way (my Mom figured that earning my own money for social expenses was a good life lesson), I’d have cheerfully gone to a less lavish affair. I work at an all-girl’s high school, and as a social event, Prom rules. On the Friday that Prom is scheduled, school is dismissed at noon, so the girl’s have extra time to get ready. There is a nearby all-boy’s high school that likewise dismisses at noon, but only because the two schools share a few classes. For the guys, it’s just a little extra time out of school. For all the reasons you gave in making this call, I agree with you. I’m sorry for Amanda—someone would have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be—but the school’s rule is a sensible one. I would like to know why her date backed out though. I’d like to believe that it was because of something like a death in the family or a major medical problem. We can hope so, anyway.
[…] but the school’s rule is a sensible one.
Why? What’s the benefit of limiting it to couples only? Jack hasn’t been able to create one.
I didn’t have a date for MY senior prom. I just used it as an excuse to rent a white tuxedo.
I think she should take Dad or Grandpa, a la “Meet Me In St. Louis” if she has to have a date. But I think it’s dumb to HAVE to have a date. The date requirement isn’t what makes it special. To most of us.
Hey, where have you been?
There was a time that ALL the school dances were date/couple events, proms included. In the specific case of proms, much effort was expended to match people up so that everyone who wanted to go got to go. Some of the guys had to be “convinced” that they wanted to go. In later years the “dance rules” changed to allow stag attendance, which I think was a good thing.
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On a personal note, 50-odd years ago, I was drafted as a prom date when my brother took ill and his “arranged” appearance to his senior prom became impossible. Our mother made it clear that his date should not be penalized for my brother’s illness. (There was no more avoiding this assignment that there was in avoiding LBJ’s letter that started with “Greetings…”) The lady was amenable, and we had a good time, even though I had to wear his tux… a size or two smaller than I would normally wear.
And, No. I did not bird-dog my brother’s date; that would have been unethical — although it crossed my mind.
I would have been nice if an alternate date could have been arranged for in the current case.
Pingback: Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Abandoned Prom Date | Ethics Alarms « Ethics Find
If she wants to go and she made the grades to graduate, she should be allowed with or without a date. I would have a serious talk with her about why she wants to go though. It took me weeks to figure out how to wiggle out of going to mine.
Is prom only for graduating seniors now?
Also, thanks for being another counterexample to Jack’s sexist beliefs.
Here, prom has always been only for graduating seniors. It is a graduation celebration. Who else goes there?
My school opened it to all upperclassman, so anyone that was a Junior or Senior, though most Junior’s didn’t go. I actually like it more as a Senior only event, but with the timing that many of them are, not everyone necessarily knows if they are going to graduate.
I found out today my best friends school did the same thing as yours. Seems odd to me since it is called Graduation but we definitely knew who was going to graduate and who wasn’t by the time the event was held.
And on a late, last minute note… it seems even more unreasonable that someone who is graduating can’t go but students who are not even scheduled to graduate can. I hope her college student brother ropes in a great looking friend to take her at the last minute and she can go be the envy of all the beautiful people with dates. Although I suppose if she had an older brother she wouldn’t need to worry about a date.
I have to say that at my kids’ high school, the vast majority of participants go as a group: 8 to 20 kids all together. If Archbishop John Carroll HS is like that — and the administration should be able to tell — then I don’t see a problem with Amanda going solo. Poor thing. Prom is overrated, but you don’t know that until you go. And for girls, the fairy tale is the dress and hair. That young man better have been really sick.
I’m with you on that. Of course, if we minimize the importance of couples, then bowing out is less of a betrayal, and dates will feel less obligation to follow through.
I don’t really care what the policy is. I object to changing stated policies on the fly because one person makes a stink—I always do. If I buy a prom ticket believing it’s couple only, it should stay couples only. Eliminate couples or make them optional next year.
Of course, if we minimize the importance of couples, then bowing out is less of a betrayal, and dates will feel less obligation to follow through.
I’ve never understood your belief that repeal of a rule/law implies a change of morality, but this is worse. The rule isn’t about dates backing out, it’s about couples only attendence.
I object to changing stated policies on the fly because one person makes a stink—I always do.
Sold. The school is unethical for having the stupid rule, not for refusing to change it in the run up to the event.
I hope at the very least she was able to get refunds on everything. Prom is expensive nowadays.
Why wouldn’t she? The story angle that she was losing money by not going makes no sense.
While there is one expense the school can refund (the tickets), you’re assuming the dress can be returned and the limo/hair appointment/etc can be cancelled without penalty. I wouldn’t make those assumptions.
(1) It’s been over 60 years ago, but if memory serves, I enjoyed the dressing up and the dancing. And I’m a guy. And non-gay.
(2) Same-sex marriage would change the institution? How? My wife and I thought we were in a relationship, not in an institution.
I guess I need to make this clearer: I really don’t care whether proms are couples only or couples optional. or eliminated entirely, or turned into costume balls or orgies. I don’t care. What i do care about is the principle that once it has been decided what the prom should be, one rogue attendee who can’t make the requirements because of bad luck or bad karma should be able to force the prom to change its nature, and should run crying to the press to bend everyone to her will. tgt is consistent: he always likes the cause of the self-righteous crusader with an agenda who singlehandedly sets out to make things the way he or she wants, when everyone else is satisfied and nobody is being deliberately or unreasonably hurt. Sometimes he’s right—I don’t like the conduct much, but he’s probably right about the atheist student single-handedly making an unholy stink about a prayer at his high school graduation in the Bible Belt. He’s absolutely right about the sole same sex couple insisting on going to the prom when the whole town is homophobic. In this case, however, there is nothing inherently sinister about the policy she’s challenging, except that it isn’t convenient for her, now.
tgt is consistent: he always likes the cause of the self-righteous crusader with an agenda who singlehandedly sets out to make things the way he or she wants, when everyone else is satisfied and nobody is being deliberately or unreasonably hurt.
Hey, be fair Jack. I believe that excluding singles is unreasonable hurt.
The self-righteous label and agenda quip are unnecessary. I try not to treat the postions of the self-righteous or those with agenda’s any differently than others. If the claim has merit, then the claim has merit. Full stop. That Amanda is complaining for the wrong reasons doesn’t mean we should discount an actual problem. I understand that it’s hard to get past unsympathetic complainers, but it’s important.
I also don’t believe I back causes where there isn’t unreasonable hurt/error. We just diagree on what is reasonable.
there is nothing inherently sinister about the policy she’s challenging, except that it isn’t convenient for her, now.
I don’t see a sinister requirement for a rule to be unethical. If a rule doesn’t have any tangible benefit and causes hurt, that’s enough for me.
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Also, thanks for admitting that some of my positions might have been right, even if you paint me with a pretty broad brush.
Only on this class of issues…to paint you properly and fairly, I’d need many brushes, and much detail work. And never think you are not appreciated.
Jack: How’s that shark look below you?
There is zero logic to the limitation because earnest enforcement of the policy would require a complete invasion of individual privacy on the part of the school.
There are at least 10 different ways I would attempt to circumvent their policy that would only be thwarted by privacy invasion….and here you are upset with her for taking them to task, openly and publicly.
Their policy completely shows their lack of faith in romance. Imagine she goes to the prom anyway (which takes some guts by itself) and her date does show up at the last minute.
And god forbid she find a guy at the prom who went stag as well. No. What the school officials want her to do is approach the entire student body individually to find out if any of them don’t have dates so that she can pair up and have a school approved memory instead of the one she creates on her own.
You’re argument is essentially that because participants can get around a good faith policy, the policy makes no sense. By that standard, almost no policy makes sense. This is the same argument made against controlling the borders—in fact, the argument made yesterday against Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law, you know. People can get around it, enforcing it to find the cheaters involves other problems, so let’s ignore the who thing.
You’re an ethics guy: why wouldn’t you obey the rules, and advocate changing them? Why should she have to buy a ticket? Why wear a prom dress? Any structure can be destroyed like this. Why not go stag and keep cutting in on the cute boys? Why not spoil everyone else’s expectations of the prom so you maximize your own enjoyment?
Is that what they do at Shark Proms?
I think the argument is the “good faith policy” is already outdated. Do you really think only actual couples go to this prom or that that’s desired by the student body? The rule no longer does what it was designed to do, and that design is no longer desired. It’s not ethical to keep such a rule in place.
See the Comment of the Day. I think I’m about convinced.
First, there are plenty of ways to enjoy the prom without being part of a “couple”. I’ve heard of singles going as groups, for example, or even being picked up by an existing couple who are more concerned with having fun than manufactured romance.
Second, this approach strikes me as an excellent way of institutionalising discrimination against students who—because they are not conventionally pretty, or socially experienced, or confident, or attracted to the opposite sex, or are otherwise ostracised—are already marginalised and thus would have trouble finding a suitable date. It becomes a popularity contest where the aim isn’t to win, but not to lose.
How do single people going to the prom impact the enjoyment of other prom-goers? Could you justify this assertion?
I agree that her appeal to misogyny is a red herring, and that some of the responsibility falls to her date for pulling out at such short notice. (Although, obviously, there may have been extenuating circumstances.) My opinion here is that the rule itself is a poor one, and though I can understand the reluctance of administrators to bend it while it remains in force, it seems that the collective inconvenience to other students of having a single girl attend the prom is far less compelling than the upset to this girl of having her dreams of an overhyped, one-shot special day suddenly laid to waste. This is an institutional rule, not law, and as such it should not be beyond the pale to bend it in cases of merit.
Comment of the Day, Jordan! Congratulations. It’s posted above.
In our school, not only was it couples for the prom; but the boys had to ask the girls. Girls could not do the asking.
As others prepared and bought their fancy dresses and talked about the prom, I sat at home, because no one asked me. I wasn’t unlikeable or homely, but I was very shy.
And now that Facebook is here, I have to still endure the countless pictures of our prom with everyone from our high school year commenting about how “those were the days”, etc….
Nuff said?
Sorry.
I don’t have that particular torture, and my heart goes out to you that you do.
We didn’t have Proms – though there where school Formals, As I didn’t even know the name of anyone of the opposite sex my age, it wasn’t a possibility. One problem of living 3 hours bus travel away from a same-sex school.
Never mind, when I see others my age on their second divorce, and our marriage has lasted 32 years so far, I count my blessings.
That doesn’t make your heartache any easier though, and I’m making a mess of trying to give you some comfort, sorry.