Dance to your own music

As necklines plunged, so did some students' hopes for a fun but clean evening.

They thought kids making out and dancing "dirty" at the fall homecoming dance were getting into it more than they should. Students uncomfortable with the proceedings were getting much less out of the evening than they thought they should.

So they did something about it.

As our front-page story Wednesday chronicled, what this handful of disappointed students did was pretty astonishing. We were even more impressed with what they did not do.

They didn't whine. They didn't picket. They didn't work feverishly to prohibit others from expressing themselves in a way these students felt was inappropriate. Hey, they didn't like it, but they chose to focus their attention and efforts not on shutting down the others, but on building something for themselves.

Hallelujah.

People seem to fall into two groups, the builders and the blockers. The builders see potential and pursue it. The blockers see something they don't like and they boycott, bully or just bi-, sorry; they complain. Maybe there's a need for both groups, but we know which we think does more to improve the conditions around us: the builders. And these kids? They're builders.

We heartily commend the 10 students who organized their own prom, which was held last Saturday night in an empty storefront in Dalton Gardens. About 100 students from different high schools in Kootenai County attended the event, and by all accounts, everybody had a good time - so good that they plan to do it again next year.

In other words, they've created something they can build upon.