A 13-year-old girl in an Illinois middle school got two days of detention as punishment for hugging a couple of her friends at school. The punishment was administered because the student, Megan Coulter, supposedly violated the school’s policy against public displays of affection.

Megan explained, “I was just giving them a hug goodbye for the weekend.” Her mother added that they weren’t even full-body hugs, just the arm-around-the-shoulder-and-squeeze thing. The superintendent, Sam McGowen, said he thinks that the punishment is fair and that the school administrators were adhering properly to the policy in the student handbook. In other news, Sam McGowen is a complete idiot.

This crap is really getting out of control. We had anti-PDA rules when I was in school too, and I don’t remember the exact wording but it was pretty well understood that they meant no kissing and no getting it on inside the band locker room. But this girl got in trouble for hugging her friends. Is this the message we want to send to kids these days? That hugging is bad? That you can never, ever show any sort of emotion or affection for someone while in public? I don’t want to see anyone else’s make-out session, but hugs are friendly, casual, and for most people completely non-threatening to the social fabric of their lives. I still hug most of my good friends, both men and women, especially when I haven’t seen them for a long time, and I’m all grow’d up (supposedly). I’ve never heard of anyone objecting to seeing friends hug or clap their arms around each others’ shoulders.

This is yet another case of kids’ lives being more and more micromanaged, of rules for the sake of rules; too many of these rules and they’ll never figure out anything on their own, never develop independent social skills, never learn anything “the hard way”…which for some things is the best way. See also “Grade school bans tag” for more reasons to hate school administrators practicing the CYA policy rather than allowing kids to be kids.

I like to think that as I get older, although remaining mostly idealistic, I’m not as naive as I used to be. When I first read the above headline on CNN.com, many things went through my head. “What do they mean by integrated? Was there a bunch of little proms and now there’s one uber-prom? Are they maybe now including freshman and sophomores? Why is this news?” Even after clicking on the link and reading the story highlights at the top, I didn’t totally get it:

- “Students of Turner County [Georgia] High School voted to have school-sponsored prom
- In the past, parents have organized private, segregated dances

“What, the parents used to put on their own proms and only invite the ‘cool’ people or something? Like the jocks and cheerleaders?” Then I read the first line of the story:

Students of Turner County High School started what they hope will become a new tradition: Black and white students attended the prom together for the first time on Saturday.

You have got to be f#%@ing kidding me.

What year is this? The context of that headline — a story in the here and now — totally caught me off guard, hence my complete misunderstanding of what the subject of the article could possibly be. That would have made sense had I seen it in a newspaper clipping from, oh, almost 40 years ago. But just now? No wonder this country is so screwed up. It gets even better with a (white) student referring to a prom she attended in 2001:

“There was not anybody that I can remember that was black,” she said. “The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It’s nothing racial at all.“

But the crowning jewel is really the parents. Bless these kids, most of them seem to be all for the integrated prom, but some of them actually weren’t allowed to go because their parents “don’t agree with being with the colored people”. Can you imagine those kids having to explain to their date/friend/future family and children that they couldn’t go to their senior prom because their elitist white southern parents were so racist they couldn’t bear the thought of their children at a party in the same room as blacks…in 2007?? Not that that sick mentality was ever acceptable to begin with, but I guess the whole point of this post is that I can’t believe that racism can still be so blatant, even in the south. I guess they got around the desegregation laws by throwing them as private parties.

I bet those asshole parents call themselves Christians too. They’re the ones with the “family values”. They’re also the ones that vote all these “family values” politicians we have into office. Awesome. I think I need to go be sick now.

Read the story on CNN.com.