Teen Drinking: Drunk Prom-Goers Allowed to Walk at Graduation

BETHESDA, MD — Teenage drinking has been a target this year in Montgomery County schools, so the recent decision by the interim superintendent to overturn a principal’s ouster of students from graduation ceremonies because they showed up at prom drunk  has stirred controversy.

Since the June 2015 car crash deaths of two recent Wootton High School graduates after an underage drinking party with a drunk friend behind the wheel, school administrators have hammered on the consequences of teens drinking.

From the possible criminal charges underage drinkers face to school sanctions such as being barred from prom or graduation, the message this year at county high schools was drinking comes with penalties.

Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School Principal Donna Redmond Jones in the days leading up to the May 6 prom warned students that anyone caught drinking or using drugs before or during the alcohol-free prom would not be allowed to take part in graduation. Six students were disciplined, the Washington Post reports, including several seniors.

On Friday, interim superintendent Larry A. Bowers said he had reversed the graduation ban. Although the students “consumed alcohol during prom activities,” Bowers said in a letter to parents, he had decided the seniors could walk across the stage to receive their diplomas during the ceremony on June 1.

• Is keeping a student out of a graduation ceremony too serious a penalty for underage drinking? Tell us your thoughts in comments below.

“I did not reach this decision lightly,” Bowers said in the letter, the Post reports. He said he supports the work the school is “doing to promote student safety and healthy decision-making,” but looked at board policy that generally forbids schools to use exclusion from graduation as a disciplinary tool.

Further muddying the issue, Bowers says in the letter: “However, principals retain the authority to exclude students from participation in commencement ceremonies for cause, on a case-by-case basis,” reports WTOP.

School board member Patricia O’Neill told the Post she worries about the message Bowers’ action sends to students about following school rules.

“If there are no consequences to dangerous and risky behaviors, we may have a total drunken-fest on our hands” in future proms, she said.

SEE ALSO:

• ‘This Must Stop’: Principal Tells Parents Hosting Teen Drinking Parties
• Driver in Fatal Crash Out of Hospital; Court Date Looms
• Teens Attended Underage Drinking Party Before Deadly Crash, Police Say (Updated)
• ‘It’s a Parent’s Worst Nightmare,’ Says Father of Teen Killed in Crash

The issue of teen drinking took on even more importance after the Wootton deaths a year ago. In that case, driver Sam Ellis pleaded guilty in April to two counts of vehicular homicide.

Four teens left an underage drinking party on June 25, 2015, police have said, when Ellis’ car left the road, struck a tree and flipped over, killing Alexander Murk, 18, of Potomac and Calvin Jia-Xing Li, 18, of Rockville. The Potomac man who hosted the alleged underage drinking party pleaded guilty to furnishing alcohol to a minor