Still the Big Night? : Too Much Money, Not Enough Fun--Some Sit It Out
The Prom :
Dreamy girls, sharp-looking guys, a sneaky sip of hooch and a heart-fluttering slow dance.
It’s the stuff of memories. And for some students, it’s also the stuff of history.
Prom night used to be the be-there-or-be-square event of the high school year. But the recession has dampened the spending sprees of the 1980s: Some students--and their parents--cannot spend hundreds of dollars for tickets, dresses, tuxes, dinners, limousines and after-prom parties.
Other students simply regard the prom as a rather dated affair. They attend without the great enthusiasm traditionally associated with the dance. Still others forgo the main event and turn out only for post-prom festivities.
For these students, The Prom is simply the prom.
Take Sung Suh for example. The pragmatic 18-year-old, a student at Loyola High School in Los Angeles, maintains that proms are overrated and over-priced. “This year I opted not to go so I could go to Europe with my friends,” he says.
Suh figures that a European train ticket--he’s going this summer with three pals who are also skipping the prom--will provide a more momentous experience at a price comparable to an all-the-fixin’s prom night. He runs through the figures, demonstrating that he has studied the subject comprehensively:
“I was talking to my friends who rented a limo--$120 each. They rented a tux, another $100. Prom bids (tickets) are $65. And a lot of people like to eat beforehand, so that’s another $60. The after-party costs $40. Throw in corsages, flowers and the limo tip, and it all comes to about $400.
“That’s about the cost of a Eurail pass,” Suh says--enough for a train trek around Europe once he gets the several hundred dollars needed to fly there.
Carlos Collins, a 19-year-old senior at L.A.’s George Washington Preparatory High School, is also saving his money.
“Tonight’s my prom night,” Collins proudly declares. “I’m doing something else.”
“I’m going to stay up and watch videos all night.”
“I’ve grown disappointed with the prom,” Collins explains. “Me and my friends decided we’re not going to pay hundreds of dollars to dress up and dance all night. Why would we get dressed up and wear suits we don’t like wearing?
“Why are we doing this?”
In recent years, the cost of The Big Night has soared as top-of-the-line pre-prom dinners, limos, tuxedos and dresses have become the expected fare.
In 1988, for example, The Times documented prom costs of up to $1,500 (including a chartered helicopter and after-prom trip to Palm Springs). At the time, the race toward the most-luxurious night out had prom-goer Angela Edwards of Palisades High School wondering aloud whether there were any celebratory frontiers left for her younger siblings.
“I don’t know what’s really left to do,” she said that year. “That’s a scary thought.”
The reply from some members of the class of 1992 is that the prom is kids’ stuff and that there’s plenty left to do.
“Nowadays, the prom isn’t the only party of the year,” says Linda Bravo, a 17-year-old senior at Chula Vista’s Hilltop High School. She decided not to attend her prom because “there’s a party every weekend.”
Other teens who are battle-weary when it comes to night-life stimuli are supplementing the reduced high of prom night by adding festivities to their year-end agendas or by attending no-holds-barred after-prom parties.
Says Sara Lamp, a 17-year-old Santa Monica High School senior, “Prom is just somewhere you go to get dressed up, dance and be with good friends.”
The highlight of prom night for this experienced reveler isn’t the prom itself but the days to follow. “I’m going down to San Diego to hang out with friends,” she says, adding, “I go to Las Vegas all the time.”
Says Latif Vaughn, a 17-year-old senior at San Diego’s Samuel E. Morse Senior High School: “I’m going to Magic Mountain or Wild Rivers the day after the prom.”
“Instead of prom night,” he concludes, “it’s Prom Weekend.”
Alex Plant, a 17-year-old Agoura Hills High School junior, says that some of his classmates, already drinkers and pot smokers, will have outgrown the prom by the time next June rolls around.
“There are so many kids who would rather go get drunk somewhere rather than go to the prom,” he says.
Plant and others say that, because the rules are often more lax, after-prom parties have become hip events. “People who don’t go to the prom go there.”
Says Loyola High’s Suh, who attended an after-prom party last year, “Nowadays, the after-party is more important.
“People usually have a better time there.”
Meanwhile, Shane Gerzon, an 18-year-old Santa Monica High senior, echoes the comments of other seniors who drag their feet going to the prom.
“It’s more significant to my girlfriend and to my parents,” he says. “It’s basically a social statement.”
Gerzon would rather be “with friends, doing new kinds of things . . . expressing what we’re doing instead of what we’re supposed to be doing,” he says.
He sites a recent trip to Cal State Humbolt as an example of what he’d rather do. “We saw the college. We went out to dinner. We went to a party where people were sitting out on a lawn, strumming guitars, being themselves.”
School administrators and other prom-watchers say that those who don’t attend the prom--or those who attend with the enthusiasm of a dressed-up mannequin--are a minority. They maintain that, despite the recession and fast times, the prom is still The Prom.
“I thought the recession was going to deter a lot of students in a big way from attending the prom, but it really hasn’t at all,” says Sandy Collins, college counselor and prom organizer at Grover Cleveland High School in Reseda.
Administrators at Santa Monica High School think the prom is so important that they have secured funding ($60 for a pair of tickets) for more than 20 students who want to go but can’t afford it. “We just see this as a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” says Ardis Bonozo, assistant principal for student activities.
At Gingiss Formalwear in National City, manager Betty Cruz reports that the recession has yet to hit her business. “A lot of kids compared to last year aren’t renting limos, but they’re still renting tuxedos,” she says, noting that she is renting 200-plus tuxedos a week this prom season.
Many schools report that ticket sales for this years’ events equal last year’s sales. At Eagle Rock Junior and Senior High School, 250 in a senior class of 300 attended this year’s event.
“If you think the prom’s not cool, then you’ve come to the wrong school,” says Eagle Rock principal Gloria Sierra. “These kids are so wrapped up in it.”
On the other hand, administrators admit that the recession is not the only threat to the prom’s supremacy--that some students are jaded.
In response, some schools are making their proms into fantastic theme nights at hotels and aboard boats. Other schools encourage the informality of having students attend with friends of the same sex--just as they would attend a party or nightclub. “There were a lot of kids who came to our prom stag,” says Eagle Rock’s Sierra.
And school officials say the countermeasures are working.
Says Collins, “I see some kids saying that the prom’s not cool, but I think it’s still an important rite of passage.”
“It is still a big night, despite what they say. “
