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Toronto high school restricts ‘Promposals’

Twitter user Bëckÿ Kûtçh shares her surprise 'promposal.'. Bëckÿ Kûtçh/Twitter

The flashy “promposal” – an elaborate way of asking someone out to high school prom – have become a big enough deal that one Toronto high school is banning them during school hours.

Teachers at North York’s Earl Haig Secondary School say the promposals are loud and distracting, says principal Renata Gonsalves. She recommends they be kept to after school, rather than during .

Gonsalves says if the students do want to a big promposal, they should ask first.

“They’re good kids” she said. “They ask us permission. Like, one student wanted to bring in fireworks into the school and we said, ‘No you can’t do that.’”

She says students disobeying the rules by putting on a fancy promposal won’t face anything as serious as a suspension a suspension. She and the teachers would just, “shoo them back to class.”

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WATCH: A capella singer enlists the help of his quartet in making a prom proposal in Whippany, N.J.

Edwin White Chacon, a former student from Emery Collegiate Institute, says he did a promposal for his friend.

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“During our talent show, the song, ‘Marry you’ by Bruno Mars was playing in the background. Then I got a bunch of friends to hold up letters spelling out, ‘Will you go to prom with me, yes or no?’ and she said yes.”

White Chacon said it’s better if students ask permission from teachers and the principals if they want to do a promposal during class time. Even doing it at lunch so you do not have to disrupt class is a good idea, he suggested.

These promposals have become such a huge trend for high school kids that one school in the U.S. actually banned the practice due to “safety concerns,” and “disruptions to educational process.”

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Promposals have become so popular that many are filmed and then uploaded to YouTube and shared on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.  Twitter’s “The Promposal” page asks users to send videos, pictures and stories of promposals.

Far from acting as a buzzkill, Principal Gonsalves said her school’s new rules could prevent promposal awkwardness: If teachers see a huge crowd they might ruin the big promposal plan, for example. And she doubts that any student would want their promposal ruined by a teacher saying, “Time to go back to class now.”

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