Ah, the 'Proma'! High School Students' Unusual Proms and Prom Moments

April 6, 2011 — -- It's a rite of passage for high school students, the prom. It comes with all the anxiety of being asked, being asked by the wrong person, rejected, not asked, what to wear -- the teen angst that's come to be known as "proma."

The Aquin Junior-Senior High School in Freeport, Ill., has a tradition that is designed to take the stress out of the prom. Students select their dates through a random drawing that they call "prom draw." They have no control over who they are assigned, and everyone gets a date.

"They love it. It takes all the stress of trying to figure out who you're going ask to prom," Laura Diemer, director of communications for the private Catholic school, told ABCNews.com.

Diemer said prom draw started in the 1920s as a way to allow its students who lived in a nearby orphanage the chance to go to the prom.

The practice evolved over the decades into an elaborate affair. About one month before the prom, students who will attend the dance put their names into the drawing. The boys draw their own names first in order to select the order in which they will choose their dates' names.

Each boy then pulls an envelope containing a girl's name from a bin, and a staff member opens the envelope and reads the girl's name.

The boys then perform elaborate skits, often in dresses, to entertain the assembled girls before formally inviting their "dates" to the prom.

"The guys always get down on one knee and they ask the girls if they would go to prom with them," Diemer added.

In the event that there is an unequal number of boys and girls, sophomores are invited to the prom to round things out, she added.

"It's just a date and it's a good time. They just really, really enjoy doing it," she added.

"Prom" is short for "promenade," and the website PrettyforProm.com says the dances have been around since the 1880s. The first ones were held at the elite Northeast colleges where parents saw them as a way to teach social etiquette.

They have expanded into all-night affairs with stretch Hummers, expensive hairdressing appointments, pre-prom dinners and after-event activities -- and some would sayvery little etiquette as proms were increasing venues for dirty dancing and plunging necklines.

A group of students in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, chose to have what they call a "clean" prom. They made that decision after feeling uncomfortable at the behavior – including making out and suggestive dancing -- displayed at their homecoming dance last fall, according to a report in the Coeur d'Alene Press.

Modesty rules required that girls at the prom cover their shoulders and show no cleavage.

Prom planners had extra shawls and shoulder wraps on hand just in case someone arrived with exposed shoulders, but only three of the shawls were used, the paper said.

One of the teen organizers, Jackson Hern, told the newspaper that the dance was a hit.

"They were calling it the 'squeaky clean prom,' but I call it the 'no cleavage' prom," he said.