Durham high schools are cancelling prom
Have these principals not seen Footloose?
Earlier this week, more than 100 students at Whitby’s Brooklin High School assembled in the schoolyard to fight for their right to party.
The protest was in response to the school’s recent decision to cancel prom. This is particularly unfortunate given that many students in the cohort missed out on Grade 8 graduation festivities due to Covid restrictions.
According to the CBC, a letter signed by principals from Brooklin High School, Brock High School and Uxbridge Secondary School explained that “the growing expectations, liabilities and risks connected to school-run proms make it increasingly difficult for schools to continue offering them in the way they once were.”
But the beloved high school rite-of-passage might yet be saved. The Durham District School Board has asked the schools to pause their decision and find a compromise, according to the CBC story.
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At Monday’s protest, students told the CBC that they’d been offered a consolation breakfast as an alternative.
The students said, We’re good, thanks, and launched a GoFundMe, hoping to pay for their own unsanctioned rager.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
