High School Junior Contests Couples-Only Rule for Prom

Shawnda Westly, 16, wants to go to her prom with a group of girlfriends instead of a date, but high school officials say no date, no prom.

Officials at Edison High School in Huntington Beach refused last week to sell the Huntington Beach teen-ager only one ticket to the May 30 junior-senior prom. The prom is a couples-only affair at Edison and other high schools, they explained. It’s tradition.

Traditions are “nice,” Shawnda acknowledged, but it’s time that this one was changed, she said Saturday. And she’s trying to change it.

‘It’s Discrimination’

“I think it’s discrimination, and I should be able to go in a group with girls or girls and boys if I wanted,” Shawnda said.

The teen-ager has the backing of her parents, who are arranging a meeting this week with the school’s principal, whom they called a “fantastic principal” and a fair man.

“I think she should be able to do it. I think her girlfriends should be able to do it,” said her mother, Loretta, 39. “If she doesn’t want a male companion, she shouldn’t have to have a male companion.”

The high school junior said she asked her activities director about the couples-only policy and was told, “This is the way it’s going to be. This is the way it’s always been. This is tradition.”

“I asked him why there was no stag prom. He told me to pretend that I was a stag girl and I went to the prom. And there was a couple there, and the boy wasn’t having a good time with his date, and the boy sees me across the room, and he decides to ask me to dance. And we’re dancing, and his girl doesn’t like this. So she sees some boys at the dance who are her friends and she asks them to fight her date,” Shawnda said, recalling the conversation.

‘Don’t Want a Riot’

“They said they just don’t want a riot,” she continued.

The activities director could not be reached Saturday, but the high school’s dean of students, James Buhman, said: “I think it’s a couples thing. I don’t know why anybody would want to go by themselves to the prom.

“It takes something away from it for me. We have enough dances throughout the year where that could happen. The junior/senior prom is a date time. It’s really special time in most kids’ lives. I’d hate to see them get away from that.”

A couples-only policy at proms is the rule at high schools across Orange County.

Pete Yoder, activities director at Esperanza High School in Anaheim, explained, “I think the traditional values of American society hold true for proms.”

Bill Rivera, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said the situation “seems strange” and that he had “never heard of this kind of problem.”

“We have no district policy on the subject,” Rivera said. “Each school makes their own policies. Usually, that’s done by the students, parents and faculty. I don’t know if there’s a school in Los Angeles with the same policy or not.”

Other Orange County school officials contacted Saturday said the schools and not the districts set policies. Most schools, they said, do not want unescorted students to attend proms.

“We like to encourage dates. I don’t think we want to encourage it another way,” Yoder said. “I think there are other dances they can attend. I think the prom is traditionally a couples dance.”

That may be true, Shawnda said, but some students aren’t able to get dates. In her case, Shawnda said, three boys asked her to the prom, but all three are friends. Since she doesn’t have a steady fellow, Shawnda said, she would prefer to go with her girlfriends. And because the prom falls on her 17th birthday, she especially doesn’t want to miss out.

“It’s up to her,” Loretta Westly said of her daughter, a member of the school’s debate club and athletic groups and an honor roll student since the first grade. “I would want her for the rest of her life to stand up for what she believes in.”