Only in DC: Field Trip Permission Form = Sex in Hotel

Last month, 70 middle-school students from Mid-Carolina Middle School, which is located in Newberry, South Carolina, went on a field trip with 20 chaperons to Washington, DC. However eight of them, saw a lot more than the monuments.

While the chaperons were nowhere to be found one night, it is unclear what exactly they were doing, four of girls from the field trip sneaked out of their rooms and went into the boys rooms and had sex. (It is unknown which hotel they stayed in, as well as if the any of the students were in Room 871.) Luckily, no alcohol or drugs were involved in this incident. According to the school, there was a screw up with the hotel reservations so there was not a chaperone in every room and the rooms were scattered throughout ten different floors. The school's official response is suspending the students for the rest of the school year.

When I thought about this, there were so many questions raised. First, the kids had sex, possibly for the first time, on a school field trip and the school is rewarding, I mean punishing, them with a suspension? While I will agree that having sex on a field trip probably is a prohibited activity, whose fault is it? Should the chaperones done something differently? Is it the hotels fault?

It is also interesting to hear that there is an "ongoing study" of what can be done against the chaperones, which were both volunteers and school employees. If you were a parent what would you want to see done? What if you were a school official?

The most ironic thing about the story, is that the Mid-Carolina Middle School team name is the "Rebels." Maybe the students were just taking their team name to heart. Go Rebels!