Portland's West Sylvan Middle School is Out of Control!

Drugs? STDs? Pregnancies? Violence? Bullying? Low attendance? Nope, hugs. Now this is one of the cutest school plagues I have ever seen - I'm kinda glad that out of control hugging is the biggest problem at this school, because it kinda makes you wanna laugh. I mean, sure it seems like a big problem for them, but it would have been a Hell of a lot worse if the problem was drugs or pregnancies or something.


----The hugs were out of control at West Sylvan Middle School.

Students could not pass each other in the hallway without a hug, the principal said. The girls were hugging one another all the time. Kids were late to class because of the hugs.

Classes would end, middle schoolers would eye a classmate at the other end of the hallway, "they'd scream, run down the hallway and jump in each other's arms," Principal Allison Couch said.

It was, Couch said, a virus of hugs.

So the principal banned hugs on the school campus in late February.

The campus of nearly 600 seventh- and eighth-graders joined a growing list of schools nationwide that have halted hugs as well as other behaviors deemed detrimental to teaching and learning.

Couch said she was prompted to act in part because of a school bus incident that drew police. Though she would not describe what happened, she said no students had been harmed.

Also, it appeared to her that some students were hugging others who did not want the sign of affection.

In a March 10 memo written to other school district officials, Couch wrote, "Several parents have called because their child is being hugged, and because there is a 'culture of hugging' here they didn't feel that they could say no."

In at least one case, hugging was used as a form of mockery -- when two eighth-grade girls hugged a seventh-grade boy, she said.

"'They did that to be mean,'" Couch said the boy told her later. "'They don't like me. They did that to be mean.'"

Also, parents reported that girls were using hugging as a game to see how fast boys could become aroused, Couch said, adding, "I was seeing evidence of it."

The policy may sound unreasonable to someone outside the school, she said, but if someone filed a lawsuit because of unwanted touching, a bigger news story would have resulted. ----

Full story HERE