High school prom "dancing guidelines"

I'd imagine this is pretty common these days, but students at DW Daniel High School in Central, South Carolina had to sign a contract in order to attend their Winter Semiformal and Prom dance. Along with agreeing to a no-drug/alcohol policy and dress code (nothing see-through, no ball caps, no low-cut dresses, must wear shirts, etc.), they must abide by the following "Dancing guidelines (applies to dancing on and off the dance floor)":

No straddling legs
No bending over while dancing
No front to back grinding
No moshing
No "making out" (no overt and/or prolonged public displays of affection)
No crowd surfing
Hands on waists or shoulders

Also, no Elvis the Pelvis shall be played. OK, I'm kidding about that. I think. (Thanks, Steve Marks!)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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tim

intense fondling/blowjobs/etc. on the high school dance floor, all of which happen regularly

Hunh?
GeekMan

I don’t see anything particularly authoritarian about this. As has been said, telling kids that it’s not okay to dry hump eachother in public is about teaching them a little class.

Hell, dance sexy, dance sensual. But when it comes to grinding your uglies together, take it to the back seat of your dad’s car, cause we don’t want to look at it.
- bannana
  
  Finally found someone with some sense around here. NO, girls/women of any age should not grind their ass against a boy’s/man’s crotch in public for any reason. There might be on caveat; unless it is an acting job or other professional endeavor.
Dead Air

Hey “front to front grinding” and “back to back grinding” are apparently allowed! Just don’t lose a contact lens on the dance floor if you want to go to future school events…
franko

if today’s teens are anything like we were when i was a teenager, then where there’s a will, they will find a way.
shannigans

Nobody puts baby in a corner!
jenjen

Wait, can I put my hands on my own waist?
- Anonymous
  
  No!!! They failed to mention the rule about keeping your hands off your own body. Heavens, that’s just downright wicked!!!
d913

“No staddling legs”"

??? — Like sitting backwards on a chair?
aelfscine

Furthermore:

All bustles will be properly oiled and maintained.

All gentlemen will have their mustaches suitably waxed, and muttonchops combed in accordance with modern styles.

All servant beatings greater than two slaps shall be performed out of sight of guests.
- Anonymous
  
  And no waltzing!
jackm

Wait a second… There’s no ban on casual sex on the dance floor.

Since they’re dictating behaviour, and not expecting people to follow common sense, that means it’s perfectly okay to bonk away!
Alan

Also:

No parking on the dance floor.
Anonymous

At my high school, from which I graduated mid-last-decade, the dances had a strict rule that you must keep both feet on the floor at all times, and remain 12 inches from your partner at all times. For one dance chaperones wandered around with rulers to measure distance, and the cafeteria lights were left on all evening.

The lights were later turned off but the two feet on the floor rule stands to this day.
- Zhiva
  
  And how were you supposed to move while keeping both feet on the floor at all times?
  - Anonymous
    
    Moonwalking is allowed.
Ella

I grew up in the Central/Clemson area and attended this high school in the early part of the last decade. Unsurprisingly, for related and unrelated reasons, it was a real unpleasant place to grow up.
RuthlessRuben

I feel like getting out my spats and walking cane all of a sudden.

Pip, pip, cheerio.
Anonymous

Damn, people, just let kids be kids! When I think back to all the times in high school that were spoiled by the control freaks in charge of the school system…
- Anonymous
  
  “Damn people, let kids be kids!”
  
  So 16 and Pregnant?
  
  Geez, asking kids to act decent and not hump each other in public, how uncool.
  - AirPillo
    
    Maybe you grew up in a different society than most of us, but requiring someone to sign a contract or be denied access is not “asking” it is “issuing an edict” and these are two distinctly opposite things.
    
    One conveys authority but respect to students, the other conveys an attitude of entitlement to control social interaction, and an open contempt for the people you’re addressing.
    
    If anyone thinks disdainful authoritarian attitudes towards high school students is the proper way to make them act as they wish, they know less than nothing about teenagers.
  - Anonymous
    
    Like others have said, better to hump with clothes on in public than without in private. May as well add “no skirts above the mid-calf”, veils, gloves and petticoats to the dress code. What kid would actually want to go to this dance?
  - bombjack
    
    [...]
    [...]“Damn people, let kids be kids!”[...]
    So 16 and Pregnant?
    [...]
    
    You know there are condoms and at least in Germany there is the way that girls can get the contraceptive pill if they are over 14 years (without approval from the parents) if under 14, they need the approval of the parents.
    
    DonÂ´t treat juveniles as babies…..
    
    bombjack
putty

Does a blowjob on the dance floor count as an prolonged and/or overt display of affection?

The high school aged me would have boycotted this “dance” and spent my time actually doing something fun.
mdh

Are the Archie’s really going to play the dance Jughead?
The Hamster King

No suction devices.

No cling wrap.

No piercings below the waist.

No Sailor Moon outfits.

No fur suits.

No “Rusty Ventures” on the dance floor.
mrfantasy

Woo hoo! Front to front grinding is O-K! As long as you’re not doing it affectionately!
mrfantasy

And I guess it’s just generally understood these days that the Lambada is forbidden.
Anonymous

We had to sign a similar thing when I was a teen. . . in 1995.
Donald Petersen

Today’s parents are weird. I went to high school during the Nancy Reagan/Just Say No/Footloose/AIDS era, and (unlike the high school featured in Footloose) we didn’t have to deal with half the parental/administrative angst that today’s kids are saddled with.

My daughter’s only 3 right now, but when she reaches high school age she’s gonna be given as much franchise and discretion as possible when it comes to this sort of thing. A great many of my classmates have high-school-age children of their own now, and surely most of those classmates remember what happened when parents or faculty clamped down a little too hard.

Close dancing doesn’t get anyone knocked up. But “contractual dancing guidelines” come from an abstinence-only mindset, and just a step or two further down that road you find a condom-free wasteland of teen pregnancy and disease.

‘Cause them boys & girls wanna get some, and if they can’t dance it out, they’re gonna want it even more. Try and tell me that ain’t true. ‘Specially for them boys.
- IsolatedGestalt
  
  and if they can’t dance it out, they’re gonna want it even more
  
  Without touching on the contract itself or the nature/efficacy/intent of the rules, I’ve got to call BS on this, unless your definition of “dance it out” is more literal than common usage would indicate. Surely you’re not suggesting that grinding or making out makes them want it less, are you?
Mitch

No fun.
Anonymous

I find it so ironic and hysterical. The very same people enacting these laws, rules, regulations, etc are the very same people who DID THEM AS KIDS/TEENAGERS TOO!

So let me get this straight…hip grinding at a dance was so adverse on you Mr 60 yr old as a teenager, it scarred you and messed you up so bad you could never again be functional in society; that you are no passing laws and setting rules in place to prevent it? Wait…WHAT?!?!

How about we simply have what I know I had during those teen years….Chaperons! Ya know…ADULTS just watching and ensuring things don’t get carried away. Wow…that too hard. too difficult?
Anonymous

I wouldn’t have minded rules like that in high school (graduated 2002.) It was all the same kind of dancing, but it made me deeply uncomfortable- mostly because, in retrospect, I really really really wasn’t comfortable with guys grinding up against me, but they would anyway…because “everyone” was doing it.

If someone did that today, I’d think of it in terms of sexual harassment and possibly assault, but who thinks of those things at 16? I just was ashamed of not being OK with it.
Daniel Friesen

Wow… “Hands on waists or shoulders”?

Guess my High School mandatory PE class where they taught us to Waltz (mandatory) was fairly vile?

Now if I could only remember that “other” dance they taught us…

Though personally… meh, I never bothered to go to a prom… I skipped the non-mandatory parts of grad…
redstarr

The messed up thing is that with exception of banning moshing those rules have extremely little to do with the health and safety of the children involved. They are just to make sure that any adults that see it aren’t made uncomfortable.

And don’t they remember their own youths? It’s not what happens at the dance, in front of chaperones and other students, that is what a parent really needs to worry about. It’s the parties before and after and the skipping out early on the dance and going elsewhere to do much less wholesome activities. These rules just make the dance that much less attractive to kids that might have liked to attend and makes it that much harder for kids that might want to opt out of the wild stuff to tell their friends they want to stay at the dance. The lamer the dance is, the much harder it is to say “No. Yall, go smoke pot in your brother’s van and get laid. I’m having a blast here not touching all these modest dressed girls.”.
ausPPC

To quote a bloke named Travis from (one of) my old high schools, “Is it alright if ya pubes are black?” Honestly, fuckin’ “adults” who won’t tolerate the inevitable maturity process of younger people…
liamuk

I’m a freshman in high school now (in a suburb of nyc), and our administration is ok with everything on that list, except for crowd surfing, because it can lead to injuries.
Our administration is so cool, as long as there is no harm done, they let it be (and no, being damned to hell by religion is not considered harm)
Anonymous

Yet another reason to just organize your own prom without the school’s involvement.
bzishi

No moshing? But they already booked Slayer!
Anonymous

Speaking from experience as a high school nerd, I would have loved these rules as cover for my, and other classmates, inability to get our hands anywhere interesting.
IsolatedGestalt

For those who object to (or simply ridicule) this policy, what — specifically — is your objection? Are you opposed to particular rules on their own merit? To the mechanism of presentation (i.e. as a ‘contract’)? To the basic idea that the school could apply a behavior policy at all?
If the objection is on the rules’ individual merit, does it make a difference who initiates the policy (parents vs. administrators vs. students)?
The folks who run and manage BB have instituted and regularly enforce (in a _very_ fair and reasonable manner, of course) a rule-based comment policy that prohibits certain behaviors, in the interest of providing an environment that supports a particular set of ideals, which seems structurally similar, down to the “must agree for entry” and “removal from the community upon violation”. (Thankfully, “avoid run-on sentences” isn’t one of the rules…) I don’t see much scorn for “don’t troll” or “stay on topic”, even though those are prohibitions of behaviors that would likely be rampant if BB “just let kids be kids”.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Unlike trolling, you dry humping your boyfriend behind the punchbowl doesn’t detract from everybody else’s fun.
  - IsolatedGestalt
    
    @Antinous
    
    Unlike trolling, you dry humping your boyfriend behind the punchbowl doesn’t detract from everybody else’s fun.
    
    Perhaps not, but the same activity in the middle of the floor certainly can. I may not agree with the specific set of rules, but I have no problem with a group of people trying to have an event where their preferred level of decorum is upheld. There is a vast difference between “don’t do X or Y at event Z during time W” and “don’t do X or Y ever, anywhere.”
Anonymous

Maybe all the students can make shirts with pictures of people on them, doing all of the above-named things. And the word “FUCK” in huge letters. That appears not to be banned. As long as the shirt isn’t low-cut.
uricacid

no sex in the champagne room
billso

Where is “South Caroline”?
- george57l
  
  Just below “Sweet Caroline”?
  
  (Yeah – I’m that old)
Lexica

My husband is a catering bartender and works many proms during the appropriate season. His poker face gets a workout every time, as he tries not to laugh out loud watching the parents watch “as their precious innocent darlings are out there on the dance floor waxing their boyfriends’ laps with their butts.”

The best time, he said, was the night he got to watch several parents, who quite clearly had no idea what the lyrics meant, singing along to Lil Jon’s “Get Low”: “Skeet skeet skeet!” sang the parents… *cough!* went my husband.
- wygit
  
  I remember when my little sister was 12 and I was, along with a bunch of parents, helping chaperone a roller skating party at the local rink, and could barely keep from laughing when nobody younger OR older really listened to Marvin Gaye’s lyrics.
  
  They played both “Let’s Get It On” AND “You Sure Love to Ball”.
kmoser

It’s a wonder the kids don’t up and start their own impromptu prom dance in an abandoned lot, warehouse, or public mall.
Anonymous

There is only one real rule: OBEY!
mellowknees

No bending over while dancing? WTF are these kids supposed to do when Rock Lobster plays?!!???!!???!?!?!and even more implied indignant punctuation!

If we had been forced to sign a contract like this back in my day, I am sure we would have come up with 1,000 different ways to still be lewd without breaking these rules, just because the stupid rules were there in the first place. I am sure teenagers today are no different. Clearly whoever came up with this brilliant plan either doesn’t remember what it is like to be a teenager, or was kept in some sort of vault from age 12-18. Kids will always figure out ways to push against rules…especially when they’re pretty stupid rules.
Anonymous

I was unable to attend the last few hours of one of my high school dances, because I was wearing shorts. A friend of mine and I had to work at the local Dairy Queen that night, as our coworkers were at the dance. We typically wore shorts on the job as there was no air conditioning. When we showed up after closing the obtuse PE teacher denied our entrance sighting some sort of imaginary dress code. Now I’m a pathetic loser because I wasn’t able to bump and grind with all over his daughter.
Anonymous

And no waltzing!

“…he put his arm around her, pressed her to his breast, cavorted with her in the shameless, indecent whirling-dance of the Germans and engaged in a familiarity that broke all the bounds of good breeding…”

Fraulein von La Roche warned us about this type of filth!
ymendel

It-shouldn’t-need-to-be-said disclaimer: The following text is all my opinion. I am not a professional anything that applies here. I have thoughts and hobbies.

As an actual, honest-to-goodness dancer, I don’t see any problem with the general idea ostensibly behind these rules. I’d prefer it if there weren’t so much a specific set of rules as an overarching “hey kids, don’t be skeezy douchebags” policy, but the underlying difficulty there is that if you actually know how to not be a skeezy douchebag, you probably aren’t one.

The real problem is that very few people have learned how to dance properly. I’m not talking about Arthur Murray ballroom lessons. I’m not talking about Zumba classes at the local Y. I’m not talking about jazz/tap/hip-hop/latin/fusion/whatever. I’m talking about some experience in comfortable social partner dancing, and it takes experience to be comfortable. It takes some time (on both sides) to break through the bubble and not freak out about touching or being touched, especially in this essentially Puritanical society.

And that’s where rules like this come from, and it’s where activities that bother others enough to create rules like this come from. Anecdotally, I was a lot more excited, confused, and wary about physical proximity with people in general — let alone touching or dancing — before I’d been dancing for some time. Now it’s just a thing. I do it. I enjoy it. There isn’t a sexual aspect to it (unless there specifically is one, IYKWIM).

Also anecdotally, I participated in a program to help teach inner-city kids dance, the idea being to “keep them off the streets”, to give them an additional outlet of energy, to let them experience some positive, respectful ways to address, interact with, and touch each other. I wasn’t part of it for very long, but saw a wonderful progression during my time with the group.
Anonymous

Chances are the admininstrators don’t care a fig what the kids do once they’re off school property. But they want to be damn sure that they don’t have to face a ranting right-wing nutjob parent who’s just heard that HIS kid was subjected to THAT DISGUSTING FILTH AT SCHOOL.

Heaven forbid that kids should have any fun. That wouldn’t be comporting with our good Puritan values, would it?
David Pescovitz

Please kids, no freaking.
Anonymous

this is sooo 50s.

.~.
simonbarsinister

Does everyone really have a problem with teaching our kids not to have foreplay in public?

They can go have sex in private before and/or after the dance.

This is about manners and decorum, not “au-thor-i-tay”.

I guess it’s hard when their teen media idols are are pole dancing on stage.
Anonymous

Same rules we had in 1979, and for all the same reasons, I suspect.
Anonymous

You hear that sucking sound? It’s the fun, gone.
dculberson

I’ve driven through Central, SC. There is absolutely nothing there. I’m surprised there are enough high school aged kids to warrant a prom, much less this level of angst over it! With a total population of around 3,000, this rule set has to be affecting what, 10 kids?
- Anonymous
  
  Yes, the town is small. But remember that in rural areas, kids come from a 20-mile radius to attend one high school. I grew up near there, and Daniel is considered one of the larger schools in the area. Several thousand kids, I believe…
John Napsterista

On the bright side, the kids can get away with any of the following, since none of them are on the official proscribed list of forbidden dances/moves:

* skanking
* pogoing
* stage-diving (so long as not followed by crowd surfing)
* front-front grinding (so long as done non-affectionately, as mrfantasy noted)
* homoerotic/gender-challenging Vogueing
* covert displays of affection (apparently without limitation)
* any kind of touchdown celebration dance (even if banned by NCAA and/or NFL)
* lap dancing
* use of concealed, radio-controlled vibrating devices while dancing

The students at DW Daniel High School could have a great time and still thumb their noses at the squares, if they all pledge to stick ONLY to the moves listed above.
- TenInchesTaller
  
  Man, I love a good voguing in South Carolina.
ocschwar

Oh, Christ…. A prom marks the end of high school. THE END. If by the end of high school, the kids aren’t conforming to whatever values/virtues/silly-bourgeois-hangups the school is supposed to uphold, then the school has failed in its mission, and they should just admit it, let the kids do whatever, and be glad they’re gone while they prep to greet the next freshman class. If you have to print rules like that for the prom, you have lost.

Got to say, wheneever I hear of kids holding anti-prom events, it gives me the warm fuzzies.
Anonymous

In my high school there was a specific rule against “butt dancing.” They showed us a video just to make it clear.
regeya

Wait, they’re banning dry humping from a school function? Well, there goes civilization!
Wargagets

Ummm , let me guess , the principle has 7 daughter attending that school ,on the other hand i think this was meant for Father Hickeys sunday service
Teapunk

@bombjack: Yes, I’ve been wondering about that, too!
Why is having sex as a teenager seen as something so dangerous?
Get educated, get the pill, use condoms.
Really, it’s not that difficult.
And dance!
braininavat

The unruly dances were the only good thing that ever happened at my high school. We had live rock bands playing top 40 covers, I danced like the wild child I was, did the bump with a hot girl I liked, kissed another less attractive girl (it was magical, I’m a gay male), got buzzed on booze and weed… typical Vancouver BC late 70′s experience. I pity kids under regimes like this.
jordan

So, prolonged kissing is OK if it’s antagonistic?

Does nobody realize that John Lithgow played the villain in ‘Footloose’, and not the hero?
penguinchris

To be fair, the kind of “dancing” that high school kids have been doing for the past decade (or more) can border on the obscene in the eyes of many. I’m not a prude in any sense, and don’t really consider it obscene, exactly, but I was still quite uncomfortable seeing people doing intense grinding on the dance floor in high school (graduated 2004).

I have no problem with vigorous, energetic, and/or sensual dancing. But there are some things that are going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. I think students can handle refraining from grinding (which is basically dry humping) and intense fondling/blowjobs/etc. on the high school dance floor, all of which happen regularly. The people who do these kinds of things do them elsewhere too – either at dance clubs, private parties, or wherever. They’re free to do that in their own group.

Problem is, the high school dance is for everyone else too – the people who don’t normally go out dancing very often. In reality, because of the obnoxious dancers, the people who wouldn’t normally do much dancing either don’t go to the high school dances, or don’t go out on the dance floor if they do.

I don’t think ridiculous contracts like this are the answer. And I think parents should keep their hands out of it for the most part. I just wish the obnoxious kids would show some common courtesy.

I also wish young people enjoyed vigorous 40′s and 50′s style dancing. Can be just as exciting and sensual (more so actually), but doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable.
Sekino

Read: “We know deep down you’re all slutty little dirty criminals, kids; we’re watching you.”
Anonymous

“No front to back grinding”

So front to front’s all good then?
naty2101

i think that some schools are getting out of hand with the rules
that they are enforcing i mean i understand that it is inappropriate
for school but then why make a dance for them if you have to
make them sign a contract stating that they can not dance a certain
way or they will be removed from prom this is the way some kids
dance and you cant expect them to follow all the rules because
well they are kids and they aren’t harming anyone and at least
they out smoking pot or other stuff that could harm them they are
just dancing in a sexually suggestive way.
Anonymous

As a UK resident, I did wonder what insidious and corrupting activity “moshing” was:
—————————————————————
(mÅsh) pronunciation
v., moshed, moshÂ·ing, moshÂ·es. v.intr.
To knock against others intentionally while dancing at a rock concert; slam-dance.
v.tr.
To knock against (someone) intentionally while dancing at a rock concert.
[Perhaps alteration of MASH.]
mosher mosh’er n.
—————————————————————
So now I know, courtesy of Answers. I can see now that this evil and disgusting activity will undoubtedly promote promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies, hair loss and haemorrhoids.
Whoever wrote that little lot of rules must surely qualify as the nanny of the week.
- george57l
  
  Was there a typo there? Should “nanny of the week” have been “ninny of the week”?
  
  Nincompoops, all. Kids will find ways, and written rules or “contracts” (and I doubt this qualifies as an enforceable contract) will not stop them.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  Anon@62: Anit-moshing has nothing to do with teen pregnancy and everything to do with those damned punks. At least back in the day (80′s, early 90′s) is was about hating on those damned punks.
Anonymous

I go to Daniel, and the dance costs $15, so you are paying to do nothing, haha, and on the Prom Contracts, my friend told me it says that you have to keep your pants and shirt on!
jere7my

I’m not a prude in any sense, and don’t really consider it obscene, exactly, but I was still quite uncomfortable seeing people doing intense grinding on the dance floor in high school

To be fair, Chris, you are a penguin.
neph13

so, I opened up BoingBoing a few minutes ago, started scanning the headlines, and I saw
“High school porn “dancing guidelines”

I really need to get some rest.