“Everybody Dance Now:” A Prom for All Letters of the Acronym

Published April 15, 2008

By Alex Townsend

Those of you who ignore the many posters that pepper our walls may not have noticed, but the month of April has been reserved for a whole fun assortment of events sponsored by the LGBTQA community. All of them sound intriguing, such as the Queer People of Color Movie Night (4/18) and the Parfait Partay (4/24), but the event that has me the most excited is the Queer and Ally Prom on the 19th. Now, for you straight readers out there, this is certainly not your cue to browse back to the Shit List, because this is something you should know about too. The word ally is stuck in the title for a reason. Everyone and their breeder-buddy are invited too.

So what’s so exciting about a queer prom? Well, there are two sides to that. First of all it’s a night of fun. There will be music and dancing in Billings from nine until the wee AMs, and it comes with the rebellious thrill of throwing aside tradition and gender roles. Who wouldn’t get a kick out of that?

The second significance is a bit deeper. It’s been about a year since I was in high school, but if I stretch my memory I can recall stuff about prom. It was kind of a big deal, wasn’t it? Girls would dedicate crusades to finding just the right dress and spend small fortunes to get their hair and nails done to look just right. Meanwhile, the boys would get sized for rental tuxedos and sweat out of every pore at the thought of meeting their date’s parents.

Prom can be seen everywhere: in movies, on television, and plastered across countless magazines. It is commercially hyped to be the most important event of your high school career and is supposed to be one of the best nights of your life.

Now we all know that prom night is not usually all it’s cracked up to be. Imagine though, with all those hopes in the air, to not be able to take the date you wanted to that big dance, to not be allowed to.

My high school (my Massachusetts high school) didn’t allow same-sex couples into its dances. If it was obvious that the two of you couldn’t conceive a drunken-prom-night baby then you were turned away at the door. There were protests of course, I even asked one of my close friends to be my date to make a point, but the policy remained in place.

Mine wasn’t and isn’t the only high school to do this. By this I mean it wasn’t the only one to make gay students lie about themselves in order to attend one the most looked-forward-to events of teenage life.

High school sucks, doesn’t it?

The point is, it’s important that UVM is having a queer prom.

Everyone deserves to dance with whomever they want: man, woman, in- between or other.

Everyone deserves to have a dance during which they can be themselves, even if it does mean turning the term “prom queen” on its head.

The Queer and Ally Prom is asserting that just by existing and it’s giving a lot of people the prom they should have had the first time around.

Whatever your sexual and/or gender orientation is, it’s an event you should attend. It’s fun, music, dancing, and even (dare I say it?) snacks! It can be an opportunity to experience something new or just a time to spend with some of your closest friends. Most importantly, it can be a chance to show the world at large that you support proms with couples of all sorts. After all, you are so totally over high school.

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