By Ethan Walshe
Editor-in-Chief

As you know by this stage, the annual Halloween dance that was scheduled for Saturday, October 27, was cancelled due to a lack of interest – unconfirmed reports say that only seventeen tickets were sold. This is just the latest in a growing trend of dance cancellations at Westford Academy following last year’s controversial grinding rule.

The Welcome Back Dance that opened the 2012-13 school year saw an attendance of around twenty people. Last year’s Halloween dance, though 350 tickets were sold, was cancelled after no one wanted to go following a change of date due to the early snowstorm.

This trend can easily be linked to the institution and enforcement of the controversial grinding ban that was put into place at the beginning of last year. According to head of DECA and business teacher John Rogers, roughly 1000 tickets were sold for the DECA halloween dance in 2010, compared to the 350 in 2011 and the seventeen in 2012. This is an enormous decline that I believe is a direct result of this strict no-grinding policy.

And this is exactly what angers me.

I personally think it’s ridiculous that students are refusing to go to school sanctioned dances because they aren’t allowed to dance in an overtly sexual manner, at least this is the largely agreed upon assumption. Anyone who has ever observed or participated in grinding can tell you that it is essentially simulated sex with clothes on, and for me, I don’t think that’s something that should be encouraged amongst such young people.

It’s worrying that this is an issue that students find so reprehensible that they simply won’t buy tickets for school dances, excluding prom and cotillion. The basic message that is being sent is “okay, we can’t dance like this, so we’re not going to go to dances.” It’s not too difficult to make the connection between the two occurrences.

As you might have been able to tell before, I don’t think that it’s my place to tell people how to live their lives or what they should be doing with themselves, but this is an issue that really gets under my skin. It’s indicative of a changing culture amongst young people. Sexualization is occurring at increasingly younger ages and it’s plain to see in the culture of WA given the reaction to the grinding rule.

Something that students may not realize is that not attending club funded dances only comes back to hurt them. DECA was in charge of the Halloween Dance, as it was to be a major source of fundraising for the club. Given its cancellation, that is no longer the case. SADD is another proprietor of dances, and if the trend continues they too could see diminished funds.

Rogers disagrees with my assertion that people aren’t attending dances because they can’t grind, saying that the decreased dance attendance is more a result of a change in student tastes.

“I think maybe kids are tired of [dances]. I think maybe we have to cycle through a few years and wait for the kids to ask for them again,” said Rogers.

But as I have asserted, this is because students aren’t allowed to grind. That is why students do not want to go to dances. And if that’s not the reason, it’s because people don’t think anyone else is going, and then they do not want to attend the dances. It simplifies down to the grinding ban.

The bottom line is that this is disturbing. It concerns me that because Westford Academy students can’t dance overly sexually, they won’t go to a dance. It’s worrying.

Maybe this will all turn around and dance attendance will once again increase, but it doesn’t look this way for the immediate future.