Bodily Fluid Cleanups Inspire “Dirty Dancing” Ban

"The [high school] custodial staff were…cleaning bodily fluids off the floor."

Another local high school is trying to ban “dirty dancing” at proms. Why? There seems to be problem with a dance in which students cluster in tight groups, preventing adults from seeing what’s going on in the middle.

So what’s going on in the middle?

"The custodial staff were…cleaning bodily fluids off the floor," Susan Nolen, copresident of the Parent Teacher Group and mother of two students at Penncrest High School told the Inquirer.

Well, Patrick Swayze never did that.

Penncrest High School is not the only school pushing for a “cleaner” type of dancing at school-sponsored events. Springfield High School in Delaware County directed the DJ at their May prom not to play hip-hop or R&B music, so as to discourage students from sexually suggestive dancing.

In response to the messy “amoeba” (as students like to call the huddle dance), Penncrest principal Rick Gregg let parents know that students weren’t leaving room for the Holy Ghost at school dances. Gregg immediately got parental support last spring for a student “dance contract,” reports the Inquirer.

"There would be a tight cluster of students . . . and in the center we had no idea what was going on," Nolen told the Inquirer. "Clearly, there was inappropriate touching; that was obvious during the cleanup of the dances."

The contract went out at the beginning of the 2009-10 school year, requiring students to take Breathalyzer-type tests, allow bag searches, and step away from "grinding, freaking or any mimicking of sexual acts"; "front-to-back touching"; straddling one another; or "doing anything that requires resting their hands on their knees or the floor," reports the Inquirer.

Students had to sign the contract by the first day of school.

Radnor High School and schools in Upper Darby, Strath Haven and Conestoga are also adapting the dance contract or something similar, according to Radnor principal Mark Schellenger.

And while Gregg says the contract worked this year, with no extra floor polish needed, there are still teenage boycotts to be had. Off-site dances have been planned and Facebook rants have been posted on pages of protest, all of which make statements reminiscent of this:

Nobody puts Baby in the corner.
 

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