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October 23, 2005
Poor Little Rich Kids
I read this story a week ago and kept meaning to post on it and then forgetting. This might have been one of my favorite "Take that!" moments of all of 2005. A Long Island Catholic high school principal has sent a note to parents at the beginning of the school year noting that he has cancelled his school's spring prom.
When I first read the headlines about Brother Kenneth Hoagland's decision, I dove in fully expecting yet another hardline religious diatribe about the rites of passage that accompany a prom -- namely, spiking the punch bowl/getting drunk on four beers before arriving, and the losing/chasing far away of what was left of one's virginity. Given that prom night has been drunken sex night for generations, I was ready to wonder what the hand-wringing was all about. And then I read further, and found out that Brother Kenneth Hoagland is one of my new heroes. He's cancelling prom because too many spoiled little rich kids and their overindulgent Hamptons parents are spending obscene amounts of money on the prom, and he no longer wanted the school to be part of it.
"It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be; it is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity's sake -- in a word, financial decadence," Brother Hoagland said, fed up with what he calls the "bacchanalian aspects" of the prom.
Well, other than the fact that "financial decadence" is two words, not a word, I love this.
Not that Farming Exurb Senior High in Minnesota had what qualified as rich kids -- not by New York or John Hughes movies standards, anyway -- but to the extent that we had 'em, I hated 'em. One reason I don't think I want to stay in Westchester County is because in a hyper-affluent county that glorifies consumption and its financial standing, any kids I'd ever have here would have a far greater chance to turn into the kinds of kids I'd have deliberately bumped hard while walking down the hall when I was in school. But I digress. Before you go off howling at me about why I'm so bothered by rich kids having a little fun, realize that we're not talking about a limo ride and a $300 dress that gets worn for three hours and then tossed on a floor somewhere in a teenage-lust-induced frenzy.
In his letter, Hoagland cited a litany of problems that he says have developed over the years. He began a dialogue on the future of the prom last spring after it was discovered that 46 Kellenberg seniors made a $10,000 down payment on a $20,000 rental in the Hamptons for a post-prom party. When school officials found out, they forced the students to cancel the deal; the kids got their money back and the prom went on as planned.
But Hoagland said some parents went ahead and rented a Hamptons house anyway.
I don't know what I turn my nose up at most -- the fact that a bunch of 17 year old Hardy Jenns-from-"Some Kind Of Wonderful" types would run off and book a $20,000 a night Hamptons house for prom night, or that their daddies and mommies felt that their spoiled little children were so entitled to such a display of their wealth that they went ahead and booked it anyway even after the school said no. Either way, Brother Hoagland took a stand against conspicuous consumption (which is, if any of those parents had actually ever read any of the basic tenets you get taught as a Catholic kid, goes against the faith's belief in helping the poor and aiding the least of God's children), and for that he's one of my favorite people of 2005.
Comments
Amen. No pun intended.
Posted by: Brent at October 23, 2005 09:25 PM
A good guy indeed. I wonder if he's a Jesuit.
Who was that Cincinnati pitcher who counted "you never know" as one word?
Posted by: Linkmeister at October 24, 2005 08:45 PM
Nope - he's a Marianist.
Posted by: Brian at November 3, 2005 02:33 PM
