by Molly Preston
For the past couple of years here at York Suburban High School, there has been an ever-increasing protest against the terms of the dance expectations. Students normally engage in front-to-back dancing in a large “pack”. The administration seemed to let this slide in years past; however, last year’s prom was a different story.
The administration has chosen to crack down on this behavior due to behavior at prior dances. Part of this “crackdown” was revising the former dance expectations form: “We had difficulty at those two dances [Prom 2018 and Homecoming 2018], so basically then I took the same language that was already there…nothing in the current form is new, I just emphasized some language to make it clear as to what some of the ambiguous things were.” said Dr. Ellis.
After revising the form for Prom 2019, there was a protest from many students. Comments from Student Council President were requested but were denied. Sometime in between then and this year’s homecoming, student council appealed to Dr. Ellis to have certain things changed in the expectations; “We actually made some concessions on the draft that we used for homecoming,” said Dr. Ellis. “Student council members talked with me and they asked for permission to have front to back dancing, which I conceded on and put that in the revised version” he continued.
A lot of students would be surprised to find that the front-to-back dancing is not the problem with the administration – its the “pack”. “The grand irony in what happened at homecoming was not inappropriate dancing… the issue is the ‘pack’. Every time I tried to break up the ‘pack’ so we could adequately supervise what was going on, and not feel like we have to sit there and stalk everybody, it continued to reconvene,” said Dr. Ellis. According to Dr. Ellis, the dance expectations form will not be revised again.