A safe place after the prom? Priceless

Alcohol-free parties offer upscale lure

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Jeff Brush⁄Special to The Gazette Quince Orchard High School senior Max Van Delt Diller rides a mechanical bull at Saturday’s after-prom party. Click here to enlarge this photo Jeff Brush⁄Special to The Gazette (From left) Quince Orchard seniors Jessica Fan, 17, Angela Chang, 17, Gemma Baltazar, 17, and Ogechi Akalegbere, 18, gave their rendition of the Backstreet Boys’ ‘‘I Want It That Way” at the high school’s post-prom party Saturday.

At area schools, iPods, designer handbags and digital camera door prizes may be the single most expensive items students get their hands on during prom night, as bigger and better after party celebrations creep into the Gaithersburg area.

Looking to draw kids away from drinking parties and the dangers of late night driving, parents at Quince Orchard High School ‘‘upgraded” the after prom party this year with high tech and high end prizes that totaled about $2,000.

Lucky raffle winners walked off last weekend with a $300 digital music recorder and a trendy Tiffany and Co. heart necklace, worth about $150, just for showing up and staying for a good portion of the four-hour PTA sponsored party.

It’s a trend that has hit fairly affluent Montgomery County with full force: Parents eager to attract teens are shelling out cash, and working overtime to solicit donations, to put together $10,000 to $15,000 one-night events.

Each year, parents say, the competition grows.

‘‘Youngsters are used to high end stuff,” said Meg Baker, co-president of the Montgomery County Project Prom⁄ Graduation Coalition, a nonprofit organization of parents who collaborate on alcohol-free and drug-free post prom parties. ‘‘We encourage parents to be frugal, but I think it’s getting more difficult for them to keep up.”

Some schools in Bethesda have offered pricey items as door prizes for years. Luxury gifts segueing into the Gaithersburg area may be the result of changes in youths’ interest and a shift in the area’s demographics, said Susan Weller, chairwoman of Quince Orchard’s after prom.

In the money Here are some ‘‘upgraded” door prizes students won at Quince Orchard High School’s post prom: iPod: $300 Coach patchwork bag: $228 Nikon digital camera with batteries, memory card: $215 iPod Nano: $200 Tiffany and Co. heart necklace: $150 Source: Quince Orchard post prom parent committee

In the past, Quince Orchard gave out items to help graduating seniors with college, such as microwaves and televisions.

‘‘Now a lot of the schools provide that, or parents will probably buy those things for them anyway,” Weller explained. ‘‘These kids are a sophisticated group. Quite frankly, Gaithersburg is not Potomac, but it’s getting fairly affluent.”

Overall, Quince Orchard’s post prom party cost about $11,000, Weller said. Students sipped cappuccinos at a lobby-turned ‘‘coffee shop,” took turns riding a mechanical bull and recorded their own DVDs.

Richard Calo, a New Jersey anthropologist whose research focuses on the American prom, says post prom popularity in the 1980s and 1990s helped pave the way for pricey, elaborate celebrations that today’s proms have become.

It’s no longer just about the dress and tickets, said Calo, creator of thepromsite.com and author of ‘‘American Prom: First Love and Coming of Age.” The post prom has made the one night party into a weekend-long event.

‘‘As more kids started attending post proms, the parties started getting postponed until the next day. And what teens started to think of as prom started getting more complex...” Calo wrote in an e-mail. ‘‘In fact, much of the perceived rise in cost of prom is not because the dance and attire has become more expensive, but because the range of activities included in the prom has increased.”

That type of pressure is hitting some parents in their wallets, they say.

This year, Gaithersburg High parents pitched in $4,000 of their own money when business donations waned. Overall, the post prom at Bohrer Park, with a disc jockey, inflatable obstacle courses and fake tattoo artists, will cost about $14,000.

‘‘We’ve reached a point where we can’t raise any more money. We’ve probably reached our limit,” said Lynn Kuhn, co-chair of Gaithersburg High’s post prom.

With increases in entertainment costs, parent volunteers are paying special attention to what kids like at the June event, and they may chop off the rest when next prom season rolls around, Kuhn said.

‘‘With those prices, you need to make sure your getting bang for the buck,” she added.

So do the high end prizes and elaborate parties really work?

The numbers, parents say, are there.

About 450 of the 560 students that attended Quince Orchard’s prom last year attended the post prom.

And typically, about 550 of the 700 students that attend Gaithersburg High’s prom go to the post prom, parents said.

Overall, in Montgomery County, about 80 to 85 percent of prom-goers attend at least part of the post prom, Baker said, compared with Calo’s national estimates, which say only 36 percent of prom goers go to an after prom.

Recent weekend events have championed the cause: several youths were arrested for under age drinking at a hotel party following the Watkins Mill High School prom. Two weekends ago, two Springbrook High girls were killed in an early morning car crash, marking a deadly start to a celebration season.

‘‘We have the kids in mind here. We want them to have a good time, but we also care about their safety,” Weller said. ‘‘We try to use any money we can scrape together to keep them there.”