Our View: Prom Meets Perils Of Detention: Hi-Line Blog

Our View

A new policy has a number of students caught off guard.

As of recently, students who have yet to make up more than four hours of detention will likely not be able to attend prom.

The brouhaha surrounding the high school administration’s decision wouldn’t be so loud, however, had this rule been announced several months earlier — or better yet, at the beginning of this academic year to give students more time to make detention arrangements.

In order to work off these detention minutes, Associate Principal Dana Deines said he believes a productive and worthwhile way for students to regain their prom eligibility was to spend time cleaning up the high school’s campus last Friday. A constant eyesore and nuisance to the custodians is the unnecessary amount of trash left by students that they must clean up. It may seem fairer to ask the students to clean up their own messes. Fortunately, beautifying CFHS was not mandatory; that would cross into the realm of forced labor rather than detention. It is best to leave cleaning up the high school as an option for making up detention minutes and nothing more.

Deines said the new detention policy is quite unofficial, not included in the high school handbook. He does confirm that the high school is communicating with parents of students owing detention time, however.

No matter the detention option, students continue to feel cheated under the new prom-attendance policy.