Shawnda Didn’t Quite Go It Alone, but Prom Was a Night to Remember

It was exactly as the prom theme promised: “A Time to Remember.”

But contrary to what Edison High School’s Prom Committee probably had in mind, some will undoubtedly remember Saturday night’s dance at the Long Beach Elks Lodge as the night Shawnda Westly bucked tradition by attending with two friends--one girl, one boy--and without a date.

However, despite her parents’ fears, there were no confrontations, no hurt feelings.

Wearing a borrowed bridesmaid’s dress, shimmering and low cut, Shawnda arrived in a limousine with friends Steve Silverman and Dana Sonksen.

They went out to dinner. The three of them stood arm-in-arm for their prom picture. And the three danced together as a unit to rock music.

“Dinner was great,” said Shawnda, who also was celebrating her 17th birthday. “A waiter asked for my autograph.”

Girls Bought Their Own Wrist Corsages

The girls wore wrist corsages they had bought for themselves. “Steve didn’t tell us he didn’t have a boutonniere or we would have bought him one.”

More than one boy had asked Shawnda, a junior, to the prom. But she wanted to “just go and have fun,” she said. Next year, she would be ready for the trouble and expense of a special date, she thought.

Beyond wanting to go alone, she also wanted to publicly win the right to go alone, she said.

The school’s activities director at first denied Shawnda’s request to attend stag, explaining that it was against tradition and suggesting that singles at a couples-only dance might provoke fighting. When school Principal Jack Kennedy decided last week that she could go alone as a matter of “human rights,” controversy erupted at the Huntington Beach school.

Students Said No, Parents Said Yes

Sixty percent of the students opposed the idea, Kennedy said. Parents called in to support Shawnda, he said, while the Student Senate voted 11 to 9 to maintain the couple’s-only prom policy. Some students tacked up posters with the word stag surrounded by a red circle with a slash through it and started a petition against stags, Shawnda said.

Amy Lund, a sophomore who had tacked up some of the posters, said there would not be a confrontation over the issue because not many people came stag. Shawnda had heard rumors that some students intended to ruin her evening by intentionally spilling drinks on her dress.

Her parents were “very concerned” about harassment, said her father, Perry Westly. But he and his wife Loretta supported her decision.

Shawnda, for one, doesn’t want to forget any of it. Even the anti-stag posters. She said she plans to preserve one and bring it to her 20th reunion.