High School Educators Talk Promposals

Creating the perfect promposal has become just as important as scoring the right outfit and date to the high school ​dance.


Extending elaborate invitations to the prom – commonly known as promposals because they resemble marriage proposals – seems to have become pretty much expected among the ​Instagram generation.
But the gestures can get expensive. The average American household with teens plans to spend $324 on promposals in 2015, according to a nationwide survey from credit card company Visa Inc.​ released last week.
"I think it is partly because kids are so much on the social media now that when they actually get a chance to grandstand, they want to jump on it. They want to take advantage of it," says Rodney Logan, principal of Ewing High School in New Jersey, on the practice.​ "Plus, you hear a lot of times about students asking celebrities and celebrities agreeing to come, and so they are trying to outdo each other."

One teen in New York got several football players from the New York Jets to help out with her promposal, The Associated Press reported last month.
"Prom has been going on for as long as I can remember and longer, so this just adds, I think, just a little more creativity to it, a little more fun," says Jayne Sheltra, an English teacher and the senior class adviser at Biddeford High School in Maine.

Her students held a contest last year for the most creative​ promposal. The winner received two tickets to the prom.

"We were looking to sell prom tickets anyway and it would just sort of get the message out​," she says.

Sheltra says that promposals haven’t become disruptive at her school.

But the same can’t be said everywhere. High schools in Pennsylvania ​and Texas have banned promposals, according to local news reports.

Logan, the principal, says he doesn’t usually have a problem with these extravagant invitations, as long as the students ask and tell him what their plan is.
"I tell the students all the time, 'You can do just about anything you want, as long as it's not degrading to anybody, it doesn't cause the custodians any more work or anybody any more work, and it doesn't damage anything,'" says Logan, who has​ been in education for about 20 years.

​Some Twitter users tell U.S. News they aren't fans of promposals.

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