There sure has been quite a bit of debate surrounding proms in recent years. From overly-zealous fathers “protecting” their daughters from their prom dates to prom dress knock-off disasters, unfortunately, these days, more “bad prom stories” are going viral than good ones.

Take today’s story of a Dearborn Catholic high school’s calls for modesty during prom time, for example. Just last month, outraged students from Divine Child High School posted the above photo to their social media accounts, with captions explaining that the school was threatening to supply them with these neon orange “modesty ponchos” if they were to break the school’s strict dance dress code.

Almost immediately, the photos of the poncho went viral, opening up a firestorm of Internet hate towards the school that was so intense, administrators had no choice but to voice a public statement.

Kids sure do use social media to show their power these days, huh?

But, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s first take a closer look at this infamous “modesty poncho” display. According to first-hand accounts from the Divine Child students, school officials had created this display to threaten them with the garish pieces of fabric as a way of shaming them into following the dress code.

Along with the orange poncho, the display also contained this handwritten note:

If your dress does not meet our formal dance dress requirement–no problem! We’ve got you covered–literally. This is our modesty poncho which you’ll be given at the door.

Yikes. We are guessing that the authority figure who penned this note gets some weird satisfaction out of their students hating them because that salty note is basically pleading for a rebellious response! And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the students–as well as the Internet’s ever-present peanut gallery–delivered one.

As a matter of fact, the response was so wide-spread, Divine Child was bombarded by comments from around the world. Heck, even the local news ran a primetime story!

Finally, the high school was forced to deliver a response as to why the infamous “modesty poncho” display was installed on school grounds in the first place.

Here’s what the school had to say to the parents of the students:

Pretty interesting, huh? As you can see, according to school administrators, no students had delivered any formal complaints about the modesty ponchos.

It’s a bit of a confusing situation, especially considering the fact that it was the students who were the ones who made enough of a ruckus on social media to get the local news involved and even gain a “viral” status. Having said that, it seems that both the administrators and the kids weren’t doing a great job of communicating face-to-face.

With the modesty poncho plan scrapped, the school is now telling the public via TODAY that it hopes that its students will “provide their own wraps and shawls that would meet [its] requirements.”

Jeez, even something as simple and traditional as a prom isn’t safe from public scrutiny in 2018. Is this yet another reason why we’re all so stressed out, people?

We can’t wait to hear your take on this prom controversy. Do you side with the school or the students? Are modesty ponchos inherently offensive? Did your child get in trouble for violating dress code at their prom?