Down and Dirty at the Prom

(The following was originally published in the June 2007 edition of Bozeman's Tributary magazine.)

Down and dirty at the Prom
The bump and grind meets a one-man media circus

by Ray Sikorski

At last, I had a date to the prom.

With Bozeman Public Schools Superintendent Michael Redburn.

Okay, maybe this was wishful thinking on my part. Redburn said I could attend the Bozeman Senior High School Prom on May 5, in the interest of journalistic freedom and the public's right to know. He also said I couldn't interview any students, I couldn't take pictures, and I would have to stand in a special observation corral put in place so parents could keep an eye on their kids. He also said he'd really rather that I not attend at all.

Perfect!

Naturally, my intentions were noble. Last year's prom had sparked an explosion of controversy over the way the students danced. Parents Melea and Dean Mortenson had written letters to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle demanding something be done about the bumping and grinding they had witnessed students doing on the dance floor, moves they considered overtly sexual and inappropriate for teens at school-sponsored dances. Voices were raised at school board meetings, yet “dirty dancing” persisted.

And I didn't even know what dirty dancing was. The craziest dance we ever did at my school was the “Rock Lobster,” in which we held our noses and slowly wriggled “down, down, down...” to the tune of the B-52's undersea shanty, only to explode in innocent glee to the final, rocking verse.

I asked Bozeman High senior Sean Smith about it; Smith had written an opinion piece for the Hawk Tawk newspaper defending students' right to dance the way they wanted to. According to him, for the moves in question the female leans back and rests on the male behind her, and they move their bodies in a way that some have described as simulating anal intercourse.

“I personally believe it's innocuous,” he said. While Smith said he had never seen the groping of breasts and hiking up of skirts that some had described, he admitted that, “There's definitely is a fair amount of physical contact.”

Smith cited a survey of high schoolers taken last year, which said that 80 percent of students support no restrictions on dancing. He added that there's little point in trying stop something that's difficult to enforce, while much more egregious acts go on that parents have little knowledge of.

“They don't see what goes on at student parties,” Smith said, referring to students getting drunk, removing clothes, and “seeing who you can hook up with.”

Superintendent Redburn echoed the sentiment that alcohol is a far greater concern than dancing – although he said that the dance moves have been a concern of administrators long before the letters started appearing in the newspaper. Redburn said that there are levels at which chaperones can deal with inappropriate dancing, although there's not always agreement as to what constitutes inappropriate.

“There are students that push the envelope,” he said, explaining that those students would be approached and asked to back off, with possible behavioral follow-ups in school later on.

“Our intent is to keep this event a fun activity for kids,” he said. To prevent the heightened attention from interfering with the event, administrators sent a letter to parents explaining rules of conduct for the prom, which including a ban on cameras – not only for your correspondent, but for all students, to prevent the possibility of photos ending up in a newspaper. Obligations under federal privacy regulations were cited as the reason.

Paranoid? Redburn will be leaving his post at the end of the school year, to take a teaching position at MSU. Were the extreme measures to avoid a black mark on his record? I don't know. I do know he seemed very happy to see me, all cleaned up in my jacket and tie, as I made my way up the stairs of MSU's Strand Union building for the big night. He personally escorted me to the long hallway north of the ballroom for the “Parent's Corral,” which would be my post for the evening. There, I would have a view not only of the prom, but of the parents intent on keeping tabs on their kids.

Perfect! Right?

Well, yes and no. I could see all the students milling in, wearing their formal best. I could talk to the parents, whose opinions of dirty dancing ranged from “I'm not happy with it” to “Stuff goes on, it's always gone on for years” to “How did you dance when you were that age?”

The problem was I was about 50 yards away from the dance floor; I needed a telescope to size up the action. Was lewdness going on? I saw five students in something that looked like an inverted conga line. Was that what all the fuss was about? Or maybe that couple, where the boy was slyly sliding his palms down towards the girl's derriere; she immediately removed the offending digits to a more respectable location. But that move's been around since dancing was invented.

Without being able to interview students, my options were limited. A duo from the Bozeman Police Department showed up, who said their job was primarily to keep an eye out for alcohol violations.

“The way they dance is not a legal issue,” said school resource officer Trent Schumacher.

I had little to go on. The camera ban had been watered down to not taking any crowd shots; kids happily flashed away in the hallway. Maybe rules were being relaxed all around.

I ventured beyond the fence of my corral. Parents were doing it; surely it would be okay for me. But, despite there being hundreds of kids to keep an eye on, I felt certain that I was the one being watched most closely. No sooner had I advanced into forbidden turf when Redburn appeared nearby. I retreated to my corral.

Not much going on there. I went into the hallway. Surely there would be no issue with merely talking, right? I had a job to do, after all. It wasn't fair to set me up so I couldn't even see what was going on.

I started talking to two students accompanied by an adult, but before I even got their names Redburn was on top of me, accusing me of being a one-man media circus, threatening to banish me from the dance, and pointing me back to my corral. I asked if I could even interview adults. He said no, it wasn't a public event and people didn't come there to be bothered.

God, it was just like being in high school.

I went out to the parking lot, where no one would hassle me. A gaggle of teens seemed open to questions.

“I was almost going to pull mommy mode in there,” said Danielle Salcido, who attends Bridger Alternative School. Salcido, 19, said she used to grind, but since becoming a new mom her views have changed.

“That was cool when I was like 17, but not anymore,” she said. “They all look like they want to be strippers or something. ... Seriously, if I saw my daughter dancing like that, I'd pull a shotgun on the boy. I'd be like, 'Get away from my daughter!'”

Salcido admitted that she was in the minority among students.

“That's just gonna lead to one thing, and that one thing leads to another, and then you end up pregnant,” she said. I asked if she was speaking from experience.

“Yes, I am,” she said.

“[It's] one thing when you're in private, just with a couple people ... you're with your close friends so it doesn't really matter. But when you're in prom and dancing like that, it makes you look really terrible,” she said. She added, “Half of them in there are probably on something.”

Jeremy Saunders, 19, said that many of the kids just want to show off for the chaperones. Salcido's friend Katie Mahony, 19, said “It's just a bunch of horny kids on Ecstasy.” She added, “I think it's disrespectful to yourself.”

The next morning I felt used and discarded. Some date! My experience with Redburn left me feeling irritable. What a cad.

I had placed calls to the Mortenson family prior to the prom, with no response. I figured I'd give it one more try.

Dean Mortenson picked up the phone. Yes, he had stopped by the prom; he went near the end, and verified that they were doing the same kind of dancing to the same kind of music as he had previously witnessed. He also said that most of the evening he and his wife had been at an alternative dance they had arranged at Clubhouse, the glow-in-the-dark miniature golf place in the mall. There, a group of about 30 students enjoyed black-light dancing, air hockey, video games, and refreshments before filtering out to the after-prom party at the high school.

Mortenson said he realized that the school wouldn't change its ways, and arranging an event for students who cared to dance in a more old-fashioned way was the only way to assure a reasonably wholesome environment.

“We tried and we ruffled some feathers,” he said. “I think Bozeman High School is a really good place. We just had a problem with the type of dancing that goes on at the prom. Some parents, or maybe most parents, may be okay with it, but I'm not. I don't want to come off as the moral police or the bad guy. I guess I'm surprised that more people aren't more concerned about the type of dancing. Maybe they are and they just don't have an alternative.”

Mortenson, a father of eight, admitted disappointment at the low turnout for the Clubhouse dance. “I think we could have had quite a few more people come if we had advertised it more, and I think we will next year,” he said.

Yes, the age of innocence will return. All I need now is a date.

Bozeman writer Ray Sikorski is the author of “Driftwood Dan and Other Adventures,” available on amazon.com