She Wants to Go Stag to the Prom; Edison High Says No

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 junior-senior prom on May 30. The prom is a couples-only affair at Edison and other high schools, they explained. It’s tradition.

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

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

“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,” Buhman said. “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, said, “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.”

A General Policy

Other Orange County school officials reached Saturday said the schools, 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 Westly said, but some students aren’t able to get dates. In her case, Westly said, three boys asked her to the prom, but all three are friends. Since she doesn’t have a steady fellow now, Westly 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.

Her mother also pointed out that at $35 for two tickets, a prom dress that runs into the hundreds of dollars, with a dinner, flowers and a rented limousine tossed in, the event can become expensive. Without a date, the cost is considerably less, she said.

Support for Daughter

“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.” She said her husband and an 18-year-old daughter also support Shawnda.

The high school junior said she believes a change is due.

“If we can get this rule lifted, more and more people will go stag because I know a lot of people went stag to Estancia’s (Estancia High School in Costa Mesa) prom and said it was the best time of their life,” she said.

“It’s a nice tradition,” she said, “(but) if you go four years in high school, and high school is no walk in the park, and some girls can’t get a date and don’t want to go with their cousin, what are they going to do?”