From Pretty in Pink to Pretty in Pravda

Open-mindedness is a key value at Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to demonstrate that value they chose “Communism” as the theme to their prom, dubbing it “Prommunism.”

The Prommunist era didn’t last long. It turns out that despite feeling like they “knew a lot about the topic,” choosing the Communist theme brought a stronger reaction than they were expecting. Much stronger. Once the story hit the web (see this particularly fine take by the Spectator’s Dan Flynn), students said they “no longer felt safe” due to some of the reactions they received. So they switched themes.

If only those who lived under Communism could have switched so easily.

While the students claim that choosing the “Communism” theme was a way of honoring their education and showing off their open-mindedness, KRQE reported that Cottonwood’s Executive Director, Sam Obenshain, confessed when it was first selected that “he and many students aren’t even quite sure what Prommunism is supposed to look like.”

He was clear, however, that he wanted to be sure kids understood that “the idea of Communism can generate negative reaction,” which is a little like saying the idea of Nazism can generate diarrhea. After switching themes, one student leader confidently told KRQE that he’d learned “there are a lot of negative connotations to the word” and that students “needed to choose something less sensitive.”

Read between the lines and one gets the sense that students quickly relented and changed the theme not because they understood what the nature of the ideology was, but because in “Prommunism” they committed the one mortal sin left in our secular society: they offended people.

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