Shield Your Eyes, It's PDA Day (Feb 14. 2007) [Op-Ed]

At one time or another, we’ve all heard the term ‘dinner and a show’. A number of Cal-Hi students have decided to improve upon this wonderful concept, providing ‘lunch and a show’. From my vantage point inside the classroom where I fritter away my precious half-hour of free time each day, I am able to watch an average of three different couples as they lock at the lips and drown in their own passion, stopping to breathe only once the bell rings.
Last year, excessive public display of affection (PDA) was a problem. This year, it’s an epidemic. During break or lunch, you can’t turn a corner without running into a couple ravishing each other. More than once, I’ve seen a couple making out while walking down one of Cal-Hi’s horribly crowded corridors during the passing period. Standing outside my fifth period class one day, I saw a young lady playfully frisking her boyfriend, who was spread-eagled against they wall. By my senior year, we’re going to have to ask one of the major hotel chains to set up a branch on the Cal-Hi campus and rent out discounted rooms for the half-hour. Perhaps they could work out a program like McDonald’s and other restaurants have, and donate a percentage of their profits to the school.

Romantic relationships are natural, especially for teenagers, with raging hormones and all that, but this is too much. Whatever happened to gentle love, handholding and heartfelt cards? Everything has become straight-up sex. Instead of giving chocolate and roses for Valentine’s Day, guys are going to start bringing their girlfriends boxes of condoms or intrauterine devices. Where is today’s youth coming up with these shenanigans? My thoughts run first to the popular media, to songs like the Black-Eyed Peas’ ‘My Humps’, which is basically three minutes of sexual innuendos, and television shows like ‘The O.C.’ and ‘Laguna Beach’, which promote, among other things, promiscuity among teenagers.

The Cal-Hi discipline policy especially prohibits ‘excessive public displays of affection’, punishable with a warning on the first offense, and suspension on the second. If what I’m seeing on a day-to-day basis isn’t excessive, what is? Does clothing have to be removed before administration steps in? Lately, administration has been cracking down on tardies and revamping the detention policy. Now, it’s time to focus on defining the line between what ‘excessive’ PDA is and what it’s not; and to crack down and enforce the rule. I’m not talking about issuing a suspension for holding hands, but something has to be done about this!
I really don’t care what these couples do on their own time, but we all have a right to walk throughout campus without watching couples become intimate with each other. If Cal-Hi’s young ladies want to sell their bodies to the highest bidder, that’s great, as long as it takes place at somewhere other than school. Cal-Hi is an institute of learning, not a brothel, and it’s time to prove it.