Duh ... No!: No-pants Navy Ball tradition decommissioned

Fun not allowed.... Political correctness wins again!

No-pants Navy Ball tradition decommissioned

BY STEVE PARDO
The Detroit News
Monroe — Everyone’s pants will stay on at tonight’s Naval Ball featuring junior ROTC members from Jefferson High School, organizers promise. U.S. Navy officials put the kibosh on a 14-year-old tradition in which the commanding officer, a high school senior, strips down to gym shorts and dances around at the annual formal event. Some partygoers insert dollar bills into the student’s waistband. The invitation-only event, attended by teachers, parents and school administrators as well as students, is recorded and the DVDs sold.
But the practice raised the ire of at least one Jefferson High School parent, and the Navy ordered the practice to cease and desist at the annual bash, held at the Grosse Ile Golf and Country Club, after weighing the father’s complaint.
“We have instituted [politically] corrective actions,” said the JROTC chapter’s adult commander, Michael O’ Connor. “The issue has been resolved. I want my students to have a wonderful remainder of the year.”
The tradition started when a former student commander, who was 6-foot-5 with a bit of a “jelly belly,” took to the dance floor and busted moves that made his fellow students laugh, O’ Connor explained.
JROTC officials thought the dance was a good way for the commanding officer to experience a little humility, O’ Conner Please see Dance, Page 6A

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said. A tradition was born.
Still, some say teens shouldn’t strip and receive dollar bills at school-sanctioned events.
Barb Harness, whose daughter served nearly four years in the program, said she complained about the “striptease” at the annual ball in the past but didn’t think her concerns went anywhere.
She said she pulled her daughter out of JRTOC during her senior year in 2007 because of verbal harassment by other students and instructors.
Harness said she doubts the practice actually will end Saturday.
“I will be very surprised if they don’t do the striptease,” Harness said. “What they say they’re going to do and what they actually do — there’s a big difference.”
All branches of the military have JROTC units. There are about 3,200 units in high schools throughout the nation. They are elective courses stressing military discipline, military science, military history and citizenship.
Senior Chief Boatswain Mate Kenneth Cox, like O’ Connor, has been with the program since its inception 14 years ago. He points out the Jefferson JROTC earned “Distinguished Unit with Academic Honors” for the last eight years — a distinction given to the top JROTC organizations nationwide.
In the last 14 years, more than $3 million in scholarships have been earned by the JROTC participants, Cox said.
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Manuel Rojas, a 2001 graduate of Jefferson and a member of the JROTC program, joined the Army in 2002. He is a tank commander and served 15 months in Iraq. He’s currently serving as an Army recruiter. His experience in the JROTC program was invaluable, he said.
“It’s given opportunities over the years to many, many students who’ve gone through the program,” Rojas said. He called the student commanding officer dance a tradition and saw nothing racy or improper about it.
The complaining parent, a father with a junior son currently in his third year of the program, asked The Detroit News not to name him because he fears retribution. He’s satisfied the pseudostriptease will no longer be held but questions the integrity of ROTC officials who allowed it in the first place.
“The fundamental way they run the program is wrong,” he said. “They don’t follow rules or national guidelines.”
Jefferson High School Principal David Vensel said the father’s complaint about the dance was the first he was aware of. Vensel, who has been principal three years, attended his first Navy Ball last year. “Do I think this has harmed any kid? Absolutely not,” Vensel said. “In all the years there was no nudity, no sexual kind of connotations. It was just a fun thing.”