The nuns didn’t care if girls danced together or with boys, so long as we “left room for Jesus.” I liked our nuns, although they weren’t perfect on these matters.

I agree that this is an attempt to control a junior class “lesbian outbreak.”

One could also ask if the party was “stag or drag,” meaning, should the person look for a date or is s/he explicitly asked not bring a date? The invitee’s sex is not always male.

Google on the phrase “stag or drag” for more context.

One of my sisters went with a 26-year-old. She was the older of the pair (in terms of maturity), there was no hanky-panky, and my parents approved. The school shouldn’t have a say. And my Sr. Ball date was 19-20 and I was 17. We were platonic—I trusted him, he was funny, and yep, he was my good friend’s older brother.

That may be a problem specific to all-girls schools . . . the reason why so many girls had older boyfriends was because that their regular exposure to teenaged males was through the friends of their older or younger brothers, or the brothers of their friends (and the younger boys are icky ). So, many of them started dating boys 2.5 or 3 years older during their high school years. (Average age difference between siblings.)

And as the comment was elsewhere, the 21-year-olds were seniors when the current senior class were freshmen. So, even in a coed school, both the exposure to those older people, and the opportunity to start dating were there.

There was one 19 year old in my high school graduating class (and I’d say that only about half of us had turned 18 by the time prom rolled around). It’s not like most high school seniors are 19 and 20 years old.

The all-girls, Catholic high school I attended in the early 1990s has had the same rule for decades (and not just for proms, for ALL mixers). And we had a brother school about 500 feet away–but the girls school and our brother school had separate proms. A lot of schools in my area, whether Catholic or public have the required-het-couple rules.

And that goes together with the whole banning-the-21yo-soldier from the prom thing that was an outrage in my area in recent weeks (can’t remember if it was discussed here, or really even applicable to being discussed here). Due to the rules above, I went to the prom with a 23yo brother of a friend. Apparently, schools around my area, which commonly have the MUST BE HET COUPLES rule for prom, are also now banning 20/21-year-old boy/girl friends of the 18/19 year old seniors.

Uh…right. My point was that this rule is aimed at girls who are choosing not to bring dates, or at least not male ones. I took it for granted that people would understand I think this is a bad thing.

And I’m still stuck on the fact that this rule is only for the junior class. My sister’s class in high school - a few years behind me in the same catholic school - had a relatively high number of out lesbians. Given that there had bee zero in all previous years, the emergence of 4 or 5 all of a sudden was quite the scandal, especially when a few decided to go as couples to the prom. This story made me think of that and I’m wondering if the principal here is trying to control some junior class lesbian outbreak. (And for the record, I think that would be a bad thing too.)

try looking around at small town newspapers in central/southern illinois.

Bars and Semi-private clubs like the Eagles have Stag/Stagette parties all the time.

Which is basically a singles night.