Dance policies to change to prevent freaking

Students at CVHS who regularly attend school dances and are returning to the school next year may be surprised to learn about the administration’s plans to change the dance policy due to the lack of efficiency of our current system designed to prevent inappropriate dancing.

It seems that students have been dancing more and more inappropriately, according to administration, and what are supposed to be fun nights for everyone to come out and have a good time have become a headache for parents and teachers attempting to chaperone these events.

“We’ve come up with ideas such as having a ‘Chill out’ room, a dance-detention type of thing where students will be placed on time out for freak dancing,” said Student Services Coordinator Nick Whitaker. “We are also considering the possibility of getting more serious and issuing no warning. Simply, we’d take the students to the office and call parents to come pick the student up with no exceptions. They would automatically be suspended for the next school dance, even if it’s Junior Prom or Senior Ball; it doesn’t matter,” he said.

Freaking, or “grinding,” has been a gradually increasing issue for the older generation of adults who see it as “having sex on the dance floor” even though this form of dancing has been taking place at school dances all over the country for a number of years.  Recently, however, teachers and parents have been getting fed up and are turning more and more in favor of proposals to end the madness.

“Most students, I admit, were dancing appropriately and having a good time. But there were also a number of students who were dancing extremely inappropriately and it was really gross to say the least. Something has to be done to stop this,” said history teacher Mark Mladinich, who recently chaperoned the make-up dance that was held in February.

Students are warned every year about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior at dances, but unfortunately these warnings have never seemed to make a difference. Because it’s very rare to actually see a student get caught and face disciplinary action for dancing inappropriately at a dance, not a lot of students seem to pay attention and many continue to ignore the rules. Even when the wristband policy was introduced two years ago, student behavior remained unaffected and the problem has persisted.

Adults have taken notice to the lack of change in student attitudes at dances and the school administration has been busy contemplating new ways of actually coming up with a policy that will end the shenanigans.  While nothing is set in stone for next year, one thing is for sure: change is coming.

“We have a responsibility to keep students safe and make sure parents are happy. What we’ve done in the past two years isn’t working.  There’s going to be some changes, definitely,” explained Whitaker.

“What’s probably going to happen if the administration really wants to get serious about this is they are going to have to get tough and start sending kids home,” said Whitaker.

While one can understand how and why the administration and staff feel the way they do, when students were asked how they felt about the issue, the overall response is a totally different view of the spectrum that administration should take into consideration.

“Although some kids do take it too far, it’s usually all good and clean fun for us. Our school’s staff should just realize it’s just how dancing is nowadays. Not only at our school but everywhere else,” said senior Ashley Torres.