By Ronald Kizza Kasoma
The internet and indeed different social media platforms have been awash with images and videos of students of Elite High School attending their prom – these were most likely candidates.
The prom in itself didn’t make news but the glamour, the use of very expensive vehicles (commonly known as mpenkoni that are usually driven by the well to do in society), a helicopter aka chopper made the news. The students who were elegantly dressed in expensive dresses and suits or one can loosely say, “they were dressed to kill”, came cruising in those big and expensive cars and some in a chopper. This has not been the norm. The proms most of us are accustomed to did not have such kind of excesses like what was witnessed in the pictures and videos that circulated on the internet. We can therefore say that Elite High School students have raised the bar in as far as school proms are concerned.
From my engagements with some of the people in the car hiring business, hiring such expensive cars for a day is in the range of 1m – 2m, the car comes fully fuelled and with a driver. Of course not all these cars were hired; some cars could be belonging to the parents of some of the students. As for the chopper, I read a post from Capt. Ashaba (a renowned air transport operator) saying it costs between 3m – 4m to hire it for 30 minutes.
School proms play a significant role in the high school experience of the students, for they offer a unique opportunity for socialisation, self-expression, celebration, building confidence, creating a memorable experience, community building and personal growth among others. They bring together the entire school community into participating in different activities like fashion, dinning together among others. The whole idea, I believe is to have fun with school friends and community, celebrating one’s time and achievements in that particular school.
Basing on the above, therefore, school proms should be inclusive –all students must feel welcome, and it must be held in a safe and secure environment and well supervised, well organised, fun, memorable, respectful, student centered, affordable, and joyful among others. A prom that is short of these cannot be considered a school prom as it doesn’t conform to the basics.
Going back to the prom that is the subject of this article, yes it met most of the basics but I doubt it was inclusive, student centered and affordable. It must have cost the parents an arm and a leg and those that could not afford must have fallen off along the way.
My point of concern, however, is about the pressure the school proms put on the students and in turn their beloved. Given the fact that not all students have similar family backgrounds, I believe there are quite a number of parents in this school that felt the pinch in respect to making sure that their children show up to the prom the way they did.
This year’s prom has in the way created some kind of competition with the continuing students as they must be feeling they should be doing more when their turn comes. Hence putting pressure on the students and in turn on the parents. Let’s not forget that there are other schools that would want to outdo what Elite High school did and so the pressure is expanding to more schools, students and parents. The question is whether this kind of pressure is necessary regardless of the kind of economic crisis most people are going facing.
My humble appeal goes to the school administrators to kindly guide our children under their custody during the preparations of the school proms. Let the children under the guidance of their teachers come up with a plan that brings on board everyone and is achievable by every student and not necessarily putting up a show. Let’s go back to the basics of the school proms and their purposes before the situation gets out of hand.
For God and my Country.
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