The NYtimes has picked up on the story of the LI Catholic high school that dropped prom this year. A group of students have responded by expressing a desire to organize an alternative:

Three Kellenberg seniors are hoping they can save at least a vestige of the celebration. They banded together to lobby for an alternative event that is more staid and better chaperoned. School officials said they were open to ideas.

The three – Stephanie Lupo, 17, a member of the National Honor Society and the school chorus; Alessandro DeBellegarde, 17, one of last year’s New York State martial arts champions; and Melissa Boo, 16, a Girl Scout who plays three musical instruments – said they felt strongly that their classmates should share a celebration before scattering to the four winds.

"We wanted a day to spend with everyone, all together, because we’re never going to be like that again," Stephanie said.

Their tentative idea is for a carnival-like field day and barbecue, followed by a semiformal dinner-dance in the school, rather than a formal affair in a catering hall, the night before graduation.

Since Kellenberg’s graduation day begins with an early Mass, students may be less prone to all-night revelry, they said. Restricting the event to Kellenberg students may discourage the hormonally charged atmosphere, they said. "It’s not a date event," Melissa said firmly.

Most of the articles on this have fixated on the bacchanalia (as opposed to baccalaureate) aspect of prom, not quite picking up one of the fundamentals constantly alluded to by the school administrators – that the amount of money spent on the prom, from dresses to tuxes to dinner, and yes, to the rental of the house in the Hamptons or the hotel rooms, runs counter to what they say they’ve been trying to teach. It’s depressingly ironic to know that the culmination of the school lives of your students is an event at which they fling aside, bury and dance on the grave of every value you’d been trying to teach them for four years.