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.”
Admission: When I first read this story, this movie clip was the first thing to come to my mind.