An administration that's scared of 'teh gay' perhaps?

Hey kids - boycott! Take your pretty dresses and go with a group of friends - male of female - to a restaurant or party. Trust me, it is more fun to spend the evening out on the town than in the gym anyway, and you get to choose who to spend the evening with.

that is so offensive. And what a weird mixed message from a school. Abstinence only, but don't think you can have fun without heterosexual coupling!

eh-hem: male or female.

Ah, yes, the old "scary women and their wild sexuality-- ready to run rampant and take over the world!"

Or, of course, it could be 'the gay.'

Either way -both ways- those women have GOT to be leashed!

How about hysterectomies?

Wow things sure do change. In my day, it was the males' conduct everyone was worried about... which I guess is sexism in its own right, but frankly, at least a bit more true to life.

I find stuff like this particularly degrading, because you're injecting insecurity into a world (all girls' school, Staten Island culture, youth culture generally, society at large) thats already forced to deal with it in lethal doses. And since its the teachers making the rules, the students are more likely to internalize these notions and end up with screwed up ideas about gender, etc. This is the age where teaching the "right" thing actually can impact these kids for the rest of their lives, this school has shown complete disregard for that, and I'd argue that the system at large has no respect for the effect it has on children at that age (if it did, I would've hoped my high school would have hired some teachers that weren't flabbergasted when students pointed out that places like "Zaire" and "Rhodesia" didn't exist in the year 2000).

But on top of all the arguments I'm sure we've all got in mind, I just think its awful when school administrators and teachers do things to reduce students' lifestyle options, degrade their capabilities, insult their intellectualism, and curb their ability to just BE THEMSELVES.

I dealt with it in high school and then again in college (where I was sued by my university for acting out my first amendment rights). This is all by way of saying that this problem, by which students are treated as if they were idiots, is its own issue separate from gender and sexism.

Excellent find, Feministing. This represents a problem that plays out on so many levels... I just realized I didn't mention anything about the ramifications for same-sex couples. I guess all I have to say on that is, well, its a Catholic school, right? I guess their lack of sensitivity to that matter is par for the course, unfortunately.

Haha, anyway, sorry about the rant. I find myself super-sensitive to the concept of adults trying to fuck with kids' minds and lives in ways that go far past the boundaries of their responsibilities as educators.

I've always thought that the pressure to have a date for proms/dances (and to have it be a real date, not just a friend) is so weird. It takes what should be a fun evening of celebrating with your friends and turns it into a creepy heteronormative mating ritual... not mention that it led to sooo much unnecessary high school drama.
But taking it to the next level and actually requiring girls to have an escort in order to go to their own prom? Very weird. I agree with Bethany that it shows how abstinence-only types are strangely actually obsessed with sex and with heteronormative coupling.
And of course the idea that girls need a male chaperone to keep them in line is gross, gross, gross.

Actually, I went to a all-girls catholic high school on Long Island not too far from where this is happening and in my experience, this will have the opposite effect than what the administrators hope for.
Rather than being able to relax and have a good time, many of my friends who brought dates had to spend the majority of the time keeping their dates in line - I think it had something to do with breaking into the hallowed halls of the domain of the male fantasy of the all-girls school and trying to prove thier manhood on such grounds.

Hope it backfires on them :)

This totally sucks. I went to prom both junior and senior years, neither time with a date. I was so shy I couldn't say "boo" in high school. I dated briefly, but never around prom time. If this rule had been implemented then, I'd have been humiliated. Trust me, I wanted a date.

I want to shake the administrators and let them know that I know from experience that it will not be the socially awkward, shy girls who muster up the courage to go to prom as a group of friends who will be making the trouble. The thing I noticed about the "wild" girls is that they always could find a date when they wanted one. Often, their dates encouraged more "wild" behavior. Those of us who were more socially reserved went mostly unnoticed by the opposite sex.

I went to an all girls Catholic high school. Yes, it was run by nuns. It actually fulfilled quite a few stereotypes of girls Catholic schools.

For our dances, we were not allowed to bring a female as a date (for obvious Catholic view reasons). We were, however, allowed to come stag if we worked an hour at the coat check. It was certainly not an ideal situation, but it allowed ladies without dates to attend dances.

Prom is a screwed-up ritual to begin with. I don't think high schools should hold dances. If they want to provide activities for students, that's one thing, but they have no business interferring in what I can't help but view as an archaic mating ritual.

Next they'll require umbrellas- regardless of preference for coats or simply singing- to go out in the rain.

Also, am I the only one who read the double-meaning into male escort here? Maybe I just have a dirty mind.

I live on the beautiful island of Shaolin and would like to thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have told everyone I know about this. How horrible and what a terrible message to give young women.

Personally, I regard gender-segregated schools as a pretty messed up concept to begin with, and I don't see how any policy regarding their prom could be truly fair. Obviously, the policy as outlined in the story could be improved upon by lifting the requirement of specific gender-pairings, or lifting the requirement to bring a date at all, but the school's initial exclusion of certain genders (I can't be more specific because I have no idea how their policies address transsexuality) from attending in the first place is going to severely cripple the prom's inclusiveness any way you slice it.

What about the students' gay male friends who might want to attend? Should their options be limited to either staying home or repressing their sexual identity by going with a beard? And I don't mean to to resort to crude stereotypes, but seriously: how counterintuitive is it to keep the gay boys out if you want to have a fun dance?

The closest thing to a roundly fair solution (and this is pretty unlikely) would be to allow the students to bring guests of their choosing in a non-date capacity, but still the best thing you could achieve would be a faithful maintenance of the school's non-inclusive status quo.

Staten Island, come on. I'm a New Yorker and this makes me want to drive (take the ferry- ha) over there and shake those administrators. This is why I have shirked my Catholic upbringing. I'm definitely going to call the school.

crazylady- ha 'the gay' always makes me laugh! It's what my dad calls it, and it sounds so ignorant.

Sadly, I'm not surprised by this at all. I graduated from a public high school 15 years ago and I was not allowed to bring a girl to my senior prom. I'm not even a lesbian; she was my best friend who had transferred to another school the year before. I didn't have a male date, and we thought it would be cool for her to come to the prom and see all her friends. When I bought my ticket I was asked the name of my date and was told the same-sex couples were not allowed at the prom. I protested that she was just my friend but they didn't want to hear it.

I really hope the girls at St. Peter's have an alternative prom and just go out and have fun with the people they want to be with.

Was anybody else really confused by this bit in the article?

The students also had no comment. Off the record, they told CBS 2 HD the principal told them not to talk.

Um... what? If they said as much off the record, why is it mentioned?

wow, that's fucked up.
like there isn't enough pressure on teenage girls to date as it is. i even felt the pressure to bring a date to school dances, even though i never really had a boyfriend at at time that coincided with a major school dance event. i always just went with a gay male friend, which was WAY more fun for me than it would have been with a "real" date.

i have no problem with the ritual of school dances--it's fun to dress up and go out with your friends, which is what we always viewed it as. prom and the like should not be taken too seriously, much less be made into some kind of wackjob het mating ritual.

I went to a public high school, and there was a similar policy for prom. We were not allowed to have a same-sex date, whether that date was a friend or a romantic partner. If you wanted to go alone, you still had to pay for two tickets. And since the senior class did nothing to raise money for prom, it cost $50 a person to go. I wasn't about to pay 100 bucks to go to a sexist, heterosexist prom. So I stayed home and watched the Mets beat the Marlins in a game that was delayed like 3 times due to rain and lasted around 5 hours. It rained and hailed like crazy in New Jersey (where I'm from), so it wasn't really a good day to wear an expensive dress. I think I skipped school entirely that day. The girls were allowed to take a half day to get their hair and nails done before prom, so of course I had to bank off that policy.

This was in 2002, by the way. Oh how far we've come!

lol@ Crazylady for her suggestion of hysterectomies.

But what kind of double-edged sword is this? If it's all girls, they're afraid of rampant, crazed lesbianism (or so it would seem), but if it's a "traditional" boy-girl scenario, they'd be just as a'skired of rampant, crazed heterosexuality. I wonder if it's too risky to allow teenagers to have any kind of social interaction at all! Let's get them all private tutors and have them study in rooms with no windows and hope that they never enjoy any part of their youth before it's time to get jobs and work for the rest of their lives!

Unicron_The_Vagina:
Personally, I regard gender-segregated schools as a pretty messed up concept to begin with, and I don't see how any policy regarding their prom could be truly fair.

while i agree with all reactions as far as being totally unfair, i did want to respond to this. i went to a typical public school, and had all kinds of stupid pressure that i wasn't even really aware of at the time. i had several friends who went to private (some religious, some non) girls' or boys' schools. the girls in particular tended to come out more confident in themselves and more willing to express differences in lifestyle than most of the girls i knew in public schools.

there's quite a bit of research showing that, for both sexes, separation during the school years results in higher scores and more variety of interest in subjects. girls feel more freed to speak up when they're around other girls. the sexism in schools is still incredibly rampant, and most girls learn, at a very early age, that boys will like them better if they keep their heads down and don't act too smart. (probably a primary reason i never dated growing up). there are plenty of other places that kids interact with the opposite sex. schools actually fare much better if they can keep them separated.

For my High School graduation, we had not only to get a partner from the opposite sex to go with us, but to tell the organisers, six months in advance, his/her full name. Many girls and boys involved in violent relationships or whose relationships were in shambles had to STAY TOGETHER FOR THE PROM. Surprisingly, there were so many breakups during the summer before university. They were all boiling kettles.

I didn't bother going because proms are boring, I was "too ugly to be loved" (I believe this is verbatim) and my friends are I were cooler than that. I think we went to our favourite pub, had pizza and listened to our favourite music.

Qbert (big fan BTW),

I'd certainly believe the data from those studies, but I would disagree with what conclusion should be drawn. If the problem is rampant sexism in the schools, then the solution is to address that problem directly by actively combating that particular ignorance. Segregation just sweeps it under the rug by putting the kids in a situation in which they don't get the opportunity to express their sexism.

I don't mean to insult, but honestly I don't see any fundamental difference between scientifically/statistically supported sexism and scientifically/statistically supported racism. Even in the face of statistical data which showed a strong correlation between racial segregation and improved school performance & personal development, I would still oppose the establishment of segregated schools on principle. I feel that the same principles obligate me to react in the same fashion to the still-accepted practice of segregating along gender lines.

I have no doubt that students in both public and private schools suffer the same institutionalized ignorance that we see throughout society, but I feel like actively segregating school-age kids sends a really toxic message to their still-developing minds. It institutionalizes the sexism in a much more literal and blatant way, and normalizes it.

Additionally, all-boys & all-girls schools are, by design, inherently hostile to people who, for whatever reason, don't fall squarely into "male" or "female" categories. Every time they encounter a situation in which the notion of gender exerts influence, they are again made to feel like an outsider. Frankly, I don't feel like these emphases of gender are good for ANY of us; IMO the fewer, the better.

there's quite a bit of research showing that, for both sexes, separation during the school years results in higher scores and more variety of interest in subjects.

I don't know about that. I've not seen research on the inherent benefits of same-sex schools; maybe for private schools, of which most same-sex schools are, but not specifically for same-sex schools. I have seen some research that shows separation based on sex for certain subjects can be beneficial (of course, there are all kinds of problems that come along with "gendering" education - as Unicron_The_Vagina points out). There are both drawbacks and benefits to same-sex and coed schools. Seems fairly impossible to determine which type of school (same-sex vs. coed) would be beneficial to most or all children.

Wow. I went to an all girls Catholic school too, and this makes me appreciate how liberal it was so much. I took a girl to winter formal and to prom. And my friends and I hardly ever brought boys to our dances.

And, I can't speak for all same-sex schools, but I found that going to my school was incredibly beneficial. It helped us become more confident, assertive, and less constrained by traditional female stereotypes. I know a lot of my friends and I became comfortable with expressing opinions that don't follow social norms or whatever. I don't know about people not fitting in, since the lesbian girls at my school were just as embraced, though we didn't have many people who didn't fall into the traditional "female" category. There are a few I can think of, but they were all well-liked.

And, maybe they just used this to recruit us, and I don't have any hard facts, but girls are said to do better at same sex-schools than they would at co-ed schools. I think it didn't make as much of a difference for boys.

This IS a junior prom. When the girls are actually graduating they will be able to go no matter what. I always thought a prom was a graduation dance (in Canada anyway) for people graduating and any dates they may have. So grade 11 prom sounds strange.

Still, the rule is really dumb. Guys will control girls? They want them to date but abstain?

Huh, and here I thought it was WOMEN'S job to keep teh MENZ in line. I wish they'd just make up their minds over who are the crazy animals who need a different sex to control them.

As to the one-sex school thing: I'm completely torn. I agree with Unicron that there's something about the notion that just inherently bugs me. Ideally, sex shouldn't be a category along which we draw ANY social dividing lines (I mean, maybe in a thousand years we'll be close to this, I don't have any delusions about ever seeing anything remotely resembling this in my lifetime). But at the same time, if being around girls and not boys can help produce women who haven't been hushed and shamed into silence and low self-esteem... I mean, I can't help but wish I'd been given this chance. Like most smart girls, I learned early on that if I wanted people to like me (or, hell, just to not hate me), I needed to keep quiet and not say the things that were on my mind and CERTAINLY not show everyone that I was usually smarter than 95% of the people in the room. It's absolutely insane, this shit sticks with me to fucking TODAY. I'm a fucking litigator and I STILL feel that little "tug" inside, e.g., when I hear something that I think is wrong: "don't speak up! You'll just annoy people and if you're wrong, they'll hate you AND they'll think you're dumb." I seriously have to deal with this every goddamn day. If an all-girl school could've saved me from a lifetime of agonizing over every conversation and doubting myself at every stupid turn, fuck yes I would go back and do it over that way.

This is all conjecture, of course. But it's truly amazing what I've realized about myself -- when I'm with a group of women only (or occasionally with men who, for whatever reason, I perceive as extremely female-friendly), I am so much more outspoken and, hell, I SOUND smarter. I hear myself talking and I'm thinking "why can't I be this person at work? Why can't I be so outgoing among colleagues and at networking events? Why can't I say these things to my boss? Why am I a completely different person when there are too many men around?"

I hate it. I hate what sexism has turned me into. If an all-girl school could've let me develop as who I *actually* am -- talkative, bright, argumentative, outgoing, happy, fun -- instead of turning me into an occasionally awesome but frequently self-doubting, quiet, timid, frustrated, impotent shadow of my former self, then I just can't see how that's possibly a bad thing.

How--what? Only one dumbass commented on me taking a girl to prom (a girlfriend who was a junior so needed a senior as a "date" to go). I thought, how cool, in my home country they'd probably look at me funny. This is so frustrating.

I also went to a single-sex school and far from embracing any toxic message, it made me a raging feminist. Quite frankly it was the best thing I ever did in my teenage years. I think that single-sex schools and certain majority-minority schools, like historically black colleges, do serve an important role in our society that isn't all detrimental. Shouldn't a lot depend on the reason for segregation? And what good is a mixed-sex (or mixed-race) school built on white, male hetronormative norms anyway?

I just went to prom last night and my table was made up of, 3 heterosexual couples( though most in these couples were bi, it just worked out with heternormative pairings) 1 gay couple, one straight girl and gay best guy friend not really a couple couple, and 1 girl going stag, and we had the best time ever. And we live in hicksville with the school board being made up of only God fearing conservatives, so take heart that not all conservative run schools get away with this shit, even though they try.

Oh and sidenote: I think its the cutest when gay couples go to dances and match each other's suits/dresses perfectly. haha