By Dylan Huber

For the average high school senior, presently and listlessly eroding in a wasteland of absent meaning (also known as “second semester”), there is but one saving grace, one event of categorical importance, one event that lays claim to a pure, objective value, one event defined by an existentially invariable necessity of attendance: Prom. No other senior event even comes close to reaching its colossal presence; even the fabled Graduation, for its part, is less of a lone event than it is the culmination of four years of events.

Owing to a near century of indefatigable presence in popular culture, Prom has remained the social centerpiece of the high school experience, the authoritarian lynchpin of a “good” time spent in high school And yet, every year, there are students who do not go.

Why is this? There are, of course, a variety of reasons, but I believe there are primarily three worth considering: 1) lack of funds, 2) no date to go with, and 3) an internal desire to simply not go.

The first opens up its own internal conversation on students’ abilities to attend expensive events, but the consequence here is the most important: the student feels lesser. By not attending, the student necessarily feels that they have been committed to a “worse” high-school experience; they have unavoidably “missed out” and must bear the consequential existential burden for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, of all three reasons, it leaves the student worst off: devoid of autonomy, and still bombarded by a feeling of worthlessness. Whether they authentically wanted to go to prom or not, it doesn’t matter. The choice isn’t theirs.

The second reason, on the other hand, actually gives choice to the student, yet still leaves them mired in a feeling of apparent experiential inferiority. Prom, after all, has garnered the reputation of a necessarily romantic experience, and it consequently follows that the lack of any romantic partner would make Prom not worth going to. Of course, when the student does not, they feel lesser for it.

“But,” the student’s ingrained false consciousness may respond, “Even if I don’t have a date, I should just go with your friends!” or “Even if I don’t have friends, I should still go alone!”; all this because “one has to go to Prom, the categorically important event.” This response, however, is misguided: it presents an alternative without any deconstruction of the premise. It provides a romanceless and friendless alternative, but the premise that Prom must be attended remains completely intact and unquestioned; in this, it extracts all possible authenticity from the choice; it makes it hardly a “choice” at all. Free from all so-called necessities, however, it is in the last reason that the choice to not go to Prom is finally exercised authentically.

To choose not to go to prom, merely because one doesn’t want to, does not necessarily protect one from all existential self-doubt. And yet, it is that reasoned choice that will, if it is truly, independently desired, be authentic. Sure, some level of hegemonically-imbued uncertainty is certainly difficult to avoid, but neither is it infallible; to reject it is the essence of authenticity. Indeed, this reason leaves the student best off: affirmed in their own sense of being, and truly free in their ever-changing mode of existence.

Why does this matter? What point is there to discuss the wills of some few who meaningfully decide not to go to prom? The point, I believe, is that there is a far-reaching lesson within a lesson to look at those experiences of so-called “objectivity,” and utterly rebel against that labeling.

This is not all to say that one must never go to prom; it is to say that one should tear away the idea that one should go to prom, and then choose whether or not to go to prom.

It is only then that the experience can be authentic, and it is only then, I believe, that it can be meaningful.