He Wont Let Us Freak-Dance

Saturday night, May 15, 2004, was Lemoore High School's prom. As Lemoore principal Jim Bennett looked around the dance floor, he saw most of the guys dancing behind their dates, grinding their hips against the girls as the girls gyrated back against them. They were freak-dancing, which is how most people dance to hip-hop, but Mr. Bennett had always felt it was too sexual for a school event. "It's [the same as] foreplay," he says. During the last song of the night, a girl got on all fours and rubbed her butt against

her date's groin. Mr. Bennett was

horrified: That's it, he thought to himself, I have to stop this! So at the start of the next school year, he announced that freak dancing would be banned at all future dances.

SELF-EXPRESSION

At 9 P.M. on Saturday, December 11, Lemoore seniors Kelley Castadio and her best friend, KayDe Naylon, both 17, walked into their winter formal with their dates. All fall, Kelley and KayDe had been looking forward to their first senior formal. "Lemoore is a small

town, and there's not much to do on Saturday nights," says Kelley. "So it's a big thing to have a dance." And dances, KayDe adds, are "one of our school's only traditions."

At 9:30, the DJ put on Nelly's "Hot in Herre." Almost all of the 400 students on the dance floor immediately began freak-dancing--and Mr. Bennett walked right over to the DJ. "Stop the music," he said as he took the mic. "Ladies, gentlemen," he announced sternly, "if you continue freak-dancing, there will be no more dances." Some of the students booed Mr Bennett as he

gave the mic back to the DJ, who turned the music up. But since KayDe, Kelley, and their friends had always danced that way to hip-hop music, they couldn't believe Mr. Bennett would carry out his threat--so they kept on freak-dancing.

SCHOOL RULE

On Monday morning, KayDe was at her school's career center when she noticed the weekly newsletter for the staff. "Freak dancing is ... obscene!" she read in Mr. Bennett's column. All dances were going to be called off, he had written, unless students came up with a plan to stop the freak dancing. "I couldn't believe that he was serious," KayDe says. "That's just how we dance--like my parents used to do the twist!" She and Kelley had been elected to plan the Sadie Hawkins dance in February, and if Mr. Bennett was really banning freak dancing, she began to worry that no one would come.

That afternoon, KayDe and Kelley got the Sadie committee together to talk about the possible ban. "I'd still rather have Bennett