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By JENNIFER L. HENN; Times Leader Staff Writer
Sunday, April 26, 1998 Page: 1A
Pretty tablecloths, roses, elegant stemware and china, cameras and shed bow
ties. These are the things you expect to find on a table in a ballroom at a
prom. What you don’t expect is an ashtray.
Maybe you should.
Despite the tough anti-smoking stance most school districts take, at least
five local high schools allow prom smoking either at the tables, in smoking
sections or outside.
“I find that so extremely disturbing. It’s ludicrous,” said Michael Wood,
executive director of the American Cancer Society, Wyoming Valley Unit. “I
could never imagine schools actually planning for smoking. The prom is a rite
of passage, and if they put ashtrays on the table, they’re making smoking a
part of that rite.”
At the Crestwood junior/senior prom, guests are offered a choice of tables
in a smoking or nonsmoking section.
Girls in lavender or pink dresses can take a drag. Boys in stiffly starched
tuxedos can practice blowing smoke rings. And the nonsmokers can sit on the
other side of the room.
Apparently it always has been that way.
“We don’t hand out cigarettes at the door,” said Crestwood senior class
adviser Robert Gaetano. “But it seems we’ve allowed smoking all along. It’s
the prom, not school.”
Gaetano said he’s not in favor of smoking and admits an inconsistency
between smoking at the prom and the school’s policy of fining and suspending
students caught with tobacco.
“Who knows, maybe it will change in the future, but right now, this is the
way we do it,” he said.
Meyers High School doesn’t even separate the smokers from the nonsmokers at
its prom. The whole gang just sits together and, according to senior class
adviser Dorothy Wivell, most light up.
“It would be just impossible to prevent smoking,” she said. “You’d have to
station chaperones in the bathrooms all night. And in the halls and out on the
sidewalk. It’s too much. I’m not going to spend the whole night policing
them.”
Wivell said the idea of monitoring smoking at the prom is ridiculous.
“They’re seniors, they’re adults,” she said.
Mixed signals
Bernie Healey, director of the health care administration program at King’s
College, said that’s a defeatist attitude.
“It makes me think the schools we’re talking about gave up on their kids,”
he said. “You just can’t do that even if they are addicted to it.”
At the Northwest Area High School prom, students can’t smoke inside, but
are allowed to go outside for a few puffs.
“The reality is, I know smoking is a big thing and we need to be careful
with it. But on the night of the prom, I’m not going to hound people who go
out for a walk and have a smoke,” said principal J. Daniel Moss.
Hanover Area High School principal James Sabatini admits that, though his
school’s prom is a nonsmoking event, chaperones can’t be everywhere.
“If they sneak one they sneak one,” he said. “There’s not much we can do.”
Robert Stevens, senior class adviser at Hazleton Area High School, worries
such a lax attitude sends the wrong message to students.
“If you can’t get through a couple of hours at the prom without having a
cigarette, then you probably don’t belong there,” he said.
Not a well-known practice
Anti-smoking advocates aren’t the only ones surprised by the idea of
smoking at proms. Holly Metcalf, director of sales for the Ramada Plaza Hotel
on Public Square, Wilkes-Barre, said she’s never planned a prom with ashtrays
on the tables.
“I have 23 years of experience in the field (of prom planning). I have
never heard of smoking tables at a high school prom.”
Past experience aside, Metcalf admits there is little she can do to
discourage schools from allowing students to light up at the parties.
“Basically we rent space, and we take directives from the people paying the
bills. It may or may not be a bad idea, but it’s their idea.”
Maggie Kaufman, president of the Crestwood High School Parent Teacher
Association, said she’d never really thought about kids smoking at the prom.
“I’m a reformed smoker myself, so I can see things from both sides. It is a
school function and the school has a nonsmoking policy,” she said. “But you
get into a gray area when you try to ban things like smoking outside of the
school.”
Crestwood Superintendent Gordon Snow said he wasn’t even aware the prom has
smoking/nonsmoking tables.
“I hate to admit it. I’ve never been to the prom. I guess I’m a little
surprised,” he said. “Generally my thoughts would be that we don’t want to
encourage kids to smoke.”
Snow said the district would probably discuss changing the policy before
next year’s prom.
“It seems each year we seem to extend the nonsmoking policy further and
further. We made the entire building smoke free, then the fields. Now I guess
it’s student activities.”
Kaufman suspects more parents would be upset about the smoking policy at
the prom if they knew about it.
“I’m not saying I’m one of them, but there will be parents upset, some
vehemently upset.”
The cancer society’s Wood said he hoped students allowed to smoke at their
proms would show some restraint.
“Kids experiment with a lot of things at the prom. I hope tobacco isn’t one
of them.”
Jennifer Henn covers social issues. Reach her at 829-7139.
TIMES LEADER