Let me explain how Blue and White Night works first. It was originally called Sports Night, and was the one night where girls would be able to play sports, back when we had no female teams. Now that we do, however, it has become a dance team competition. Girls (and a couple brave guys) try out for positions on teams, and once teams are formed, they rehearse and rehearse and rehearse until they're about ready to keel over, and then they perform.
Another common association with Blue and White Night is scandal. At the beginning of the season, Blue and White team members sign a contract to not have sleepovers during the rehearsal period. Some of this is to ensure fairness- if one team has a sleepover while another can't, the other team is at a disadvantage because their competitors had extra rehearsal time. But another part of the administration's reason for this contract is drinking. As most of you know, many high school students drink. Parties and get-togethers often involve alcohol and those obnoxious red SOLO cups. This has been so for decades, and has worked its way into Blue and White Night. The administration doesn't want teams having sleepovers partly to combat underage drinking- they don't want our school or any of its institutions to be associated with underage drinking.
But how many high school students do you know who listen to the authorities? Of course the teams have sleepovers, all the time. It's almost as old an institution as the event itself! And theres nothing innately alcoholic or nefarious about sleepovers. But this time, a team was caught, and there were people at that sleepover drinking. All the girls on the team were suspended, including many of our top students. And because they refused to rat out the other teams who had sleepovers, the entire event was cancelled.
"What were they doing that they were caught?" you may ask. Here's the story as a dance team member and friend of mine recounted it to me. They held a sleepover, with no alcohol in the house. The entire team was told there would be no alcohol there. Anyone who drank brought their own alcohol- whether that was OK with the rest of the team, I do not know. and a good portion of the team did NOT drink, such as my friend on the team. Many responsible drivers there stayed sober. But someone- many suspect it was a freshman- got freaked out by this transgression against the contract she'd signed, and told her parents and the administration. The team members were suspended from school, regardless of whether they drank or not.
Now, I have never been much of a fan of Blue and White Night. Personally, I don't really want to see any oversexed dancing like that, especially when I know the people dancing- it just kinda weirds me out. Nor have I ever been a fan of underage drinking (or a drinking age, but that's for another post). But I do know a lot of people who love attending it, and i know a lot of people who participate in it, and who live for it, and I know they're devastated.
And it's a question of ethics. I know the team went back on a contract, and that's bad, but the sleepover tradition is as old as Blue and White Night itself, and a tradition that old can't be eradicated by a sheet of paper. And the questioning the team members were subjected to is out of line- the administration basically attempted to bribe the students with alleviated punishment, in order to get them to skewer their friends on other teams. That alone is suspicious, but keep in mind that these are minors, and their parents weren't present. I'm pretty sure that's illegal.
So here you have a school in tears for the cancellation of a time-honored tradition, dancers sobbing because their dedication and hard work was for naught, and a couple of people, like me, who are outraged at the way in which the administration conducted themselves.
What do you think about all this?
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