Evie Janis

Let’s help high schoolers achieve the magical prom night they deserve with the ability to bring the guest of their choice, including underclassmen.

For years, Benilde-St. Margaret’s has not tolerated younger grades at prom. Prom is restricted to only juniors and seniors because the thought is that it will prohibit inappropriate behavior, such as freshmen dancing with seniors or being reckless and ruining the dance for the upperclassmen.

This would be a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why they don’t allow underclassmen at prom, but the fact is that younger students would only ruin the dance if large groups of them attended. It would be unreasonable to think that just one underclassman could ruin the dance for all juniors and seniors.

Realistically, there would not be many upperclassmen who would even want to invite freshmen to prom, and most of the younger students invited would be sophomores. Sophomores are only a year younger than juniors; there are certainly couples with a one-year age gap, which is not inappropriate at all. In the case of a senior wanting to invite a freshman, this is where concern for the situation is appropriate. Upperclassmen should be able to get special permission to invite one sophomore. Generally, freshmen are not mature enough to attend an event intended for juniors and seniors, so it would make sense and be understandable if freshmen were completely restricted from attending prom.

Prom is a special time for juniors and seniors to relax and have fun at a fancy event. Allowing sophomores to come only with an invitation from an upperclassman would prevent too many sophomores from intruding on the event. The reality is, there are few juniors and seniors who would even want to invite sophomores to prom, but the few who would like to should have the opportunity to. There is no significant reason to keep a few sophomores from going with their junior and senior dates to prom.

The rules around guests can ruin a night for whichever group/couple wants to attend together but can’t. The question is, why should we enforce a rule if there are no real benefits to the outcome? Administrators enforce this rule simply because it has always been this way. Administrators at BSM make it clear that their first priority is the needs of their students, but when the rules of school dances are brought to their attention, they shoot down ideas immediately.

In my past experience, when trying to bring a freshman to the upperclassman homecoming as a sophomore, administrators were quick to reject the idea without consideration. When administrators don’t consider students’ ideas and opinions, it can feel very belittling and defeating, as I know from personal experience. It was upsetting to me to have to miss out on bringing my guest of choice and ruining a special part of the night only to follow a seemingly useless rule. I am certainly not implying that BSM administrators ignore student issues within the school. The BSM community and staff are dedicated to finding solutions to problems to ensure the comfort of their students in most cases, but there are also other situations in which students feel unheard. Changing the dance policies to accommodate sophomores attending would demonstrate the commitment BSM has to providing a good experience for their students.

Many juniors and seniors will not even attend prom if they are not allowed to bring their dates, especially if they are in situations where they don’t have many friends to go with. Missing out on prom would be a terrible tragedy for a student to have to endure, and it shouldn’t happen because of this rule.