
Bodmin College, a secondary school in Cornwall, has banned a handful of Year 11 pupils from its annual prom on the grounds of poor attendance and disruptive behavior. The prom is reserved only for those 160 students who have racked up an attendance rate of over 92 percent.
The parents of these students are not going to take it lying down. Some of them believe that their kids are being punished unfairly for trivial offenses such as being marked as non-participating for forgetting to bring their PE uniforms, or for taking time off to care for a sick relative, or to recover from their own illnesses.
The school, on the other hand, insists that prom has always been a privilege, the earning of which is predicated upon good attendance and good conduct, and that parents of affected students were warned about this potential endgame all the way back in March of this year.
16 year-old Mikaela is among the students who have been banned from the main prom. She says that her attendance fell below the required level because she suffered from stress—induced stomach problems from caring for her mother, who is suffering from a functional neurological disorder.
According to comments she made to a local BBC news program, her mother was notified via email that Mikaela wasn’t allowed to go to the prom because of her attendance record. Both Mikaela and her mother were outraged by the move.
Megan, another 16 year-old who was uninvited. She complained to the BBC that she did everything asked of her, but was uninvited anyway—if she had known that this would happen, she wouldn’t have bothered.
Fin, who was also banned, claimed that the entire situation was leaving people confused, worried, and stressed.
Rather than submit to the exclusion of their children, they’ve channeled their fury into organizing what they’re calling a “Rebel Prom,” which will take place on the same day as the school’s prom and play host to a hundred and fifty students.