Walking through the halls just to get to class shouldn’t be uncomfortable. But thanks to Public Displays of Affection (PDA), it is.
PDA is the intimate physical contact between people in public. This includes kissing, fondling and even hugging. It’s not unusual for people to display affection in public but there is a line that people must toe carefully.
In high schools, teenage relationships are all the rage. So for any sensible student on their way to class, they’d expect and prepare to find at least one couple blocking the hallway with a heated makeout session.
For a freshman, it would be horrifying, but ask any upperclassmen, and the “freshies’’’ mixed bag of reactions would become indifference.
What is bordering on social rejection is just something students have to get used to in the halls, the quad, the bathrooms, the stairwells and basically all over school. It’s its own high school phenomenon.
But hormones shouldn’t normalize something that only causes awkwardness among students.
PDA is already unsettling to bear witness to, however, it only gets worse in class.
Couples who sit together in the classroom are usually PG enough, but sometimes, in those special seats at the back of the class, constant giggling draws eyes to find caressing hands. While they think it’s secretive enough, it’s evident to everyone else what they’re doing.
Once the bell rings and students have free range of the campus, they take over specific halls. Take the upstairs 300s building for example — what couples think is a sly secret is actually a very well-trafficked passageway.
If a soul is brave enough to dare the stairs up to the 300s, they’d be immediately revolted at the sight of this affection and look away, reeling at what they had just witnessed.
While PDA is disquieting, a concession that can be made is that it is unavoidable. But that doesn’t mean it has to be so grotesque — no one wants to see adolescents doing questionable things to each other.
School is a hub of both social and romantic connection where students spend the majority of their day. It’s inevitable that couples will want to be together when they can. But it’s all to a degree.
In seclusion away from where it would be considered disrespectful or awkward would be optimal, but alas, nowhere at Van Nuys High School flies under the radar.
