Principal Cancels Prom Over "Bacchanalian Aspects"
10/15/2005 15:01 Filed in: Culture Watch
Image: The Triumph of Bacchus. Cornelius de Vos (1584-1651), no date. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
From the AP News story:
UNIONDALE, N.Y. Oct 15, 2005 — Kenneth M. Hoagland had heard all the stories about prom-night debauchery at his Long Island high school: Students putting down $10,000 to rent a house in the Hamptons for a weekend bash. Pre-prom cocktail parties followed by a trip to the dance in a limo loaded with liquor. Fathers chartering a boat so their kids could go out on a late-night "booze cruise."
Enough was enough, Hoagland said. So the principal of Kellenberg Memorial High School fired off a 2,000-word missive to parents at the start of the school year informing them that the Catholic school would no longer put on the spring prom.
"It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be; it is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity's sake in a word, financial decadence," Brother Hoagland said, fed up with what he calls the "bacchanalian aspects" of the prom.
"Each year it gets worse becomes more exaggerated, more expensive, more emotionally traumatic," he added. "We are withdrawing from the battle and allowing the parents full responsibility. (Kellenberg) is willing to sponsor a prom, but not an orgy."
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I remember saving all spring for my senior prom in 1986. The tux cost around $100. Dinner another $30. Tickets were what--$20? $30? I don't remember, but I do remember only one guy I knew who rented a limo and the rest of us thought that was a waste of money. I don't think the whole night cost me more than $200. Looking back, none of it was that memorable, and right now, I'd rather just have the $200. I can't imagine taking part in the frivolous spending that accompanies proms everywhere these days.
Kudos to Principal Hoagland for confronting hedonism and decadence in a culture saturated with it. I hope he can keep his job.
By the way, in case you don't know, bacchanalian is defined as "characterized by or given to drunken revelry; riotously drunken : a bacchanalian orgy" (New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition). See also BACCHANALIA .