A cursory glance at this article, innocuously titled "Bisbee casts net for new schools boss," reveals nothing revelatory. The first paragraph notes simply that the Bisbee Unified School District, which is who-knows-where, is searching for a new superintendent and that at Monday's school-board meeting that search was furthered when members decided to establish an application-review committee. But then, in paragraph fifteen, we learn what else they decided at Monday's meeting:
Students attending the Bisbee High School Prom will be given gifts bags containing pictures (sic) frames, candles, mints and two condoms per bag. The board members voted four to one in favor of allowing the gift bags to be distributed.
Paragraph fifteen is rendered even more shocking because, in addition to being tucked away as if it contained nothing of import, it is preceded by this:
Board member Luche Giacomino was concerned with the wording of another section of the dress code that deals with the length of girls' skirts. She felt the measurement by a girl's fingertips at the sides for length was to (sic) vague and wanted the code changed to inches from the knee. Finger-tip length was too short, she added.
Giacomino, who voted in favor of passing out condoms to high-school students at a school-related activity, is appalled that females might choose to wear clothing that doesn't condemn them to stylistic Siberia. Her logic puzzles.
The Bisbee school board represents an unsettling trend: The strident policing of individual behavior that isn't worrisome (wearing short-ish skirts) and the blatant promotion of behavior that is (high-school sex). Hypothetical interlocutor disagrees: But Bisbee Unified's prophylactic purveyance is not a promotion of sex???it's merely a realistic recognition that sex will occur after prom, and that such sex should be of the protected variety.
That's balderdash but it's also irrelevant. Bisbee Unified is not in the business of sex promotion or sex prevention and therefore should keep away from the subject entirely. Prom goers who wish to engage in intimate entanglements should procure their condoms from the 7-11, not from the principal's office or the prom punchbowl.