Principal Allison Couch, the principal of West Sylvan Middle School, apparently can't stand it when students hug each other, particularly girls.
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, according to Oregon Live, she banned any and all hugging in the school.
Sure, she gave examples of unwanted hugging:
She says, ‘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.'
But it seems she could have addressed the unwanted hugging without a straight ban on friends hugging each other.
The Kuzco defense has always served me well:
There are plenty of studies out there showing the physical and emotional benefits of hugs, and middle school is already a horrible experience for most children.
And on top of that these are the kids who had to spend three years of their early childhood in Covid lockdowns with no human contact.
Why make it worse?
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