The entire time (3 hours) at Prom as a chaperone is spent making sure students do not do something illegal/immoral in your designated area. Fortunately, having a walkie-talkie handy, I learned that everyone attempting to ensure the safety of these students were having just as bland a time as myself.
There were several parts of Prom(from a sociological perspective) that I wanted to speak about. First, the ease of which it is to pick all the different social groups out: The nerds, jocks, gangsters, gangstas, princesses, and 'women of loose morals', all select eveninig wear that reflect their grouping. I found this interesting because Prom is basically a more strictly regulated Halloween. Why wouldn't these students take the chance to break the mold of what defines them? Possibly they are happy and fully accept the roles that they may have helped defined themselves. The jocks are the least noticeable. They are more or less defined by their Creatine filled sleeves. The nerds typically are noted by their t-shirt tuxedos, ill-fitting clothes, or poor color choices. Gangsters wear the tuxedo, top-hat, and cane (all typically white), and gangstas are bogged down in chains, wearing sunglasses, and sometimes a baseball cap. Princesses are also loosely defined, but generally have a combination of accessories (handbag, giant necklace, tiara, etc). You can imagine what the 'women of loose morals' were wearing (generally very little).
An aspect of prom that I had never noticed before was the collection of special education students. It was touching to see the select few of these students who seemed to be having a very good time. It was severely depressing to see the rest. Maybe they were having a wonderful time and I should mind my own business, but the majority of these students looked to be wandering aimlessly hoping that someone outside their social group might speak with or even acknowledge them.
The sight of the prom king made me realize how cynical and jaded the youth of America have become. Is life really so terribly boring that you vote for your prom king because he is known for eating out of the trash cans at lunch? Really? That's what you want to talk to your high school friends about in 10, 20 years? I understand that these are basically glorified popularity contests, but isn't there a better criteria to measure Prom King abilities than lbs of garbage consumed/week?
Kudos to protest candidates.
ReplyDeleteI used to think that high schoolers voting for the funny candidate were just being juvenile, but these days I'm less sure.
Throwaway votes are inevitable in a process that feels so arbitrary, and has so little actual importance.
In this way, the rise of high school protest candidates might have something in common with low US voter turnouts.
Have I recommended The Myth of the Rational Voter yet?
What are these high schoolers protesting? The high school in general is not underfunded or understaffed. This isn't East St. Louis. If it is protest voting, I'm sure the administration would do away entirely with the Prom King/Queen ceremony. It is just more work on the teachers.
ReplyDeleteSo... what exactly are they protesting?
"What exactly are they protesting?"
ReplyDelete"a process that feels so arbitrary, and has so little actual importance."
My point (I believe) is still valid. If the process means nothing or is arbitrary to them, they could ask the administration to remove the process. Believe me, teachers (the one's doing all the work tallying votes) find the process much more tedious than the students.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely difficult to know with any certainty if the students are attempting to mock the process, or are engaged in some sort of protest/apathy vote. Either way I cannot believe forward-looking students had meant to vote for someone like this. If they did, the aforementioned cynicism would be disappointing.