"We want our young ladies to be dressed beautifully; we want them to be dressed with class and dignity."

"But we are going to draw the line relative to attire that would be deemed overexposing oneself," said Freeman Burr, the superintendent of a Connecticut school that managed to get a NYT article written about its prom-dress policy, apparently because some mothers are aggrieved that their daughters' dresses have been nixed.

Students and parents signed permission slips that outlined rules and regulations for the prom. Students say the rules were vague, calling for �appropriate formal dress� and warning that students dressed �inappropriately� would be sent home without a refund.

The article has a picture of a student who was told her backless dress wasn't appropriate (unless she wore it with a camisole). Her mother, Tonny Montalvo, is making an issue out of it: �They say it�s in the student handbook...There�s no specifics anywhere.�

If "appropriate" doesn't cut it, I guess "class" and "dignity" won't help either.

IN THE COMMENTS:  Ignorance is Bliss says:

Would it have been too much trouble to include a picture of the student who was told her backless dress wasn't appropriate while she is actually wearing the dress in question? Maybe so we could see for ourselves if it was appropriate? And would it have been too much trouble to get a copy of the text of the permission slip, and the text of the student handbook?

I know. And the NYT also declines to make the comments function available for this one. This has a real feeling of bias to it � giving ear to these mothers and depriving readers of what we need to judge the facts and a forum to point out these shortcomings.

"But abolishing high school would not just benefit those who are at the bottom of its hierarchies."

"Part of the shared legacy of high school is bemused stories about people who were treated as demigods at seventeen and never recovered. A doctor I hang out with tells me that former classmates who were more socially successful in high school than he was seem baffled that he, a quiet youth who made little impression, could be more professionally successful, as though the qualities that made them popular should have effortlessly floated them through life. It�s easy to laugh, but there is a real human cost...  I�ve learned from doctors that you don�t have to have a cure before you make a diagnosis. Talk of abolishing high school is just my way of wondering whether so many teenagers have to suffer so much. How much of that suffering is built into a system that is, however ubiquitous, not inevitable? 'Every time I drive past a high school, I can feel the oppression. I can feel all those trapped souls who just want to be outside,' a woman recalling her own experience wrote to me recently. 'I always say aloud, "You poor souls."'"

From a Harper's Magazine article by Rebecca Solnit called "Abolish High School." You'll need a subscription to read the whole thing, but I wanted to alert you to its existence. The proposal in the title doesn't seem to be more than a rhetorical device, or the attack would be obvious: Isn't the cure worse than the disease? She anticipates that with "you don�t have to have a cure before you make a diagnosis."

"It is a slippery slope if the government is now going to prosecute people under a manslaughter � a 20-year felony charge � for not preventing those who want to commit suicide..."

"... and that�s what they�re trying to do here."

Asked if they thought [17-year-old Michelle] Carter�s messages convinced [18-year-old Conrad] Roy to kill himself, his grandfather Conrad Roy Sr. said, �Her texts had a big influence on what happened.�