Public Displays of Affection Should Be Regulated by Schools: Girl Should Be Given Detention

This so-called controversy in Oregon about a 14-year-old girl getting detention for hugging her boyfriend isn't anything new. And it is not as big a deal as she is making it out to be. Get over it, girl, and hit the books. Kiss your boyfriend over the summer.

"Public Displays of Affection" or PDAs are closely monitored in many schools across Michigan. While some districts don't touch the issue, others have rules which govern the conduct of students while they are on school property or on school-sponsored activities. This is a good thing.

Look at the benefits of restricting/banning PDAs: fewer dramatic (and sometimes spectacular) break-ups in the hallways between classes (or IN the classrooms), less peer pressure to become sexually active, and more restraint (due to enforced rules of respecting one another's space) on what they decide to do when they're alone (and off school grounds) with their "significant other." Break-ups are always worse when there's a sexual or high-contact component to the relationship, and high school campus "90210" scenes are prime breeding grounds for trouble between teens who are having problems with their interpersonal relationships.

Those schools who don't address this issue are more likely to have a major problem with sexual tension which is very distracting to hormone-crazed teens and allows a very bad culture to take root in the hallways of schools and in the classrooms themselves.

Teachers in schools that had few rules about PDAs and made the switch after having major trouble with their students agree: the restrictions helped improve respect between the genders, helped with more of the blow-ups by reducing the tension, and destroyed the culture that says teens have to be sexually active in order to be cool. This is from a conversation that ThunderFerret had with a high school teacher yesterday.

Further, it's disgusting to walk through a school hallway and see a guy and a girl doing all kinds of stuff with their tongues in public. Educationally, it's very distracting and shouldn't be allowed in schools. If they want to work on their love life, they should do it on their own time.

So this Oregon school should stick to their rules and have the girl serve the detention. Rules are there to be followed, not changed because some 14 year-old decides she wants to swap spit with her boyfriend in the hallway. And Mom should be encouraging the schools to keep her daughter's behavior under control.