New West charter middle school in Los Angeles held a spring dance for it’s students, but this time with an interesting little twist:
A V.I.P. Room.
The blogger Marcy Magiera’s son is off to his Los Angeles area middle school’s spring dance this week, and to add to the usual angst — the girls on one side of the room, the boys on the other; the questionable lighting and décor; the too-loud music and hovering chaperones — the school has introduced a new element: a “V.I.P. lounge.”
For an extra $5 on top of the $15 dance admission, her son says, students get to hang out in the “V.I.P. lounge,” with a dessert bar and goody bags. “What’s next,” Ms. Magiera writes on her blog, BellaNoise, “bottle service? $10 for a jug of Coke maybe, served by a high-schooler in short shorts? While everyone else gets Capri Sun pouches grabbed out of a tub full of ice??”
[Source]
There’s a part of me that’s with the parents on this — as a former middle school teacher myself I spend a few years on the front lines of the beginnings of clique culture where cool kids or rich kids first get their taste of what it’s like to exclude others from such high-falutin’ perks as lunch table seating and group project membership.
At the same time, as the middle school teacher who frequently got roped into DJ’ing my schools dances, there’s also the fact that there are really few things lamer in this world than a middle school dance.
Aside from the groups of kids stuck to opposite walls or glued to their friends around the snack table, there are also the eagle-eyed parents just looking for any hint of trouble, which inevitably brings out the terrified-of-lawsuits administrators who frown at any and all sorts of suggestive lyrics in songs, close dancing, or lights being anywhere but all the way on while 45 little kids circle around the one kid who knows a few dance moves do his thing.
Which means that with all this worry and overprotecting going on, that when you get right down to it the middle school VIP room probably is under a billion times more scrutiny than the actual dance itself — likely making it an even lamer place to be, regardless of how many of your friends are in there.
Of course, some parents are mad because all of this would seem to reinforce the idea that the rich or cool kids not only get all the breaks at school, but that the schools actually cater to them as well — an attitude that can create an unbalanced and unfair social structure that oftentimes seems all too real in our adult culture.
But let’s be real here — No matter how mad some suburban mom might get about his kid’s chances at a TV-movie like social life, the reality is that her child is probably somewhere in the corner mortified that she’s even making noise about something like this in the first place, which even if he was some sort of “cool kid” would immediately make him look like a dork.
Here’s this man’s opinion: Want to be the cool kid at your middle school? Blow off lame middle school dances and hang out with your friends instead.
At the same time I can’t help but wonder about the doorman keeping people out of this supposed “middle school champagne room”. — Seriously, how lame a gig did that have to be?
What do you think? Would you pay the extra $5 for your middle schooler to live the high life?
@HexaCorde
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and so it begins
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sharing Stoneys sentiments.. waayyyy too extra..
Ok u just became my new crush for this gif!
awww now i'm blushing
joke stealer! LOL
eh…I guess I don't care…cause the boy is 20 lol
I think the better thing for them to do is to have a VIP room where admission is your all A's and maybe all B's grade card not charge them actual $$ make them earn their way into the VIP room that has better snacks or something…
lmao. Yeah, that will help them out socially. A nerd cage.
lol we have a few schools here that have A B dances…use to be A B C but they booted the C kids out
whatever it takes to get the grades up… *shrugs*
but I don't think charging kids extra to get in the non-alcohol champagne room is the way to go…unless maybe if it was for a fundraiser or something along those lines…
I don't know…seems silly to be honest…
LOL LOL LOL
As a former geek/nerd/wallflower, I thought Beth's idea was magnificent… until I read:
"A nerd cage."
SMDH… Memories of Junior High… LOL
LMAO @ "nerd cage"
lmao!! that right there has tears in my eyes hex!
hey in this economy its good having that nerd friend look at bill gates
One of the first middle school dances I DJ'd a kid showed up in a stretch limo. He was like "check this out" and I told him, "You know this thing only lasts until the after hours buses show up, right?"
::Sings in Gerald Lavert voice::
"No heavy petting in the Champagne Room, No heavy petting in the Champagne Room…"
::spoken in Chris Rock voice::
There is no sex in the Champagne Room….
If a woman tells you she's 20 and looks 16.. she's 12
If she tells you she's 26, and LOOKS 26.. she's damn near 40
Wow… a VIP room for tweens and a stupid dance. Yeah, okay. Whatever.
I utterly LOATHED my middle school years. Ain't no way.
My daughters middle school dance was 15 bucks. It lasted two hours and the school fed everyone wraps, snacks and punch if they wanted it. V.I.P room above is doing too much.
you already know someone is gonna make it rain…with $12
It's nothing personal! It's just that we're better than you!
<img src="http://gifsoup.com/imager.php?id=1426739&t=o" border="0"/>GIFSoup
I recall the middle school Valentine's dance with the son of my mother's new friend. I never liked him but I did like his Sega Genesis and he wouldn't dance with me (I was the one kid that knew how to dance). That was a tiny glimpse of hell. Years down the road he wouldn't interview me for a job that I was qualified for because I hadn't given him any then. Dodged lots of bullets with that one.
Somewhere down in Orange County…a group of MILFs is deciding whether or not it would be considered "over the top" to rent out a section of South Coast Plaza. Appearance must be kept up.
Lookit.
When can we, as parents, simply call "boolshyt" on something without being looked-ted at like we are some sort of child-hating sociopaths?
Neither my daughter nor my son have any gat dam bidness knowing what the fugg a VIP room is while they are in middle school!
I can only hold out hope that I'll raise the kind of people that won't be interested in VIP rooms when they do get old enough for that level of shenanigans, but in the meantime, please know that L'il Lurk and Miss L'il Lurkette will be more worried with doing their homework and playing outside in the fresh air as long as I'm payin' the bills up in this piece.
Church!
VIP room? Wait, is this is a club scene with A-list celebrities, or a bunch of pubescent children corralled at a school function?
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