Principals freaked out by students' dance, dress
By Dahleen Glanton Tribune national correspondent
Gaoda McFadden still wonders what all the fuss is about. The way the 16-year-old sees it, the principal overreacted by ending his school's homecoming party early because kids were dancing, well, the way kids dance. Like many of his friends at Stephenson High School, McFadden sees nothing wrong with bumping and grinding on the dance floor or being sandwiched between two girls with their hips gyrating against him. After all, he said, you can turn on MTV or Black Entertainment Television and see it all day.
"It wasn't at all like what they tried to say. It was juicy," said McFadden, a junior who was present last month when Principal Morcease Beasley abruptly ended the party because of what he called "disgraceful dancing." In teenager talk, "juicy" means exciting. In an era when sexy music videos and scantily clad pop stars set the standard for many young people, parents and educators across the country are waging what appears to be an uphill battle over values. Discord over lewd dancing and dress is hardly new, but the goalposts for indecency have shifted radically in recent times. School officials find themselves trying to ban students from sporting gold teeth like rappers and from "freaking," or dancing in ways that explicitly imitate sex. It is a moral challenge in suburban and rural areas where values, as suggested by the 2004 presidential election, have become one of the top issues among millions of Americans.
While each generation pushes the limits, some parents feel that pop culture, fueled by the Internet, Hollywood and cable television, has prodded teenagers further across the line of decency than ever imagined in the 1950s when some wanted to ban Elvis Presley. These days, some schools are banning certain kinds of dance moves--or canceling dances altogether. Educators are setting strict dress codes as early as elementary school, forbidding girls from wearing skin-bearing outfits such as low-rider jeans, thong underwear and midriff tops and banning attire for boys such as oversized T-shirts and pants that sag, often exposing their backside.
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