High School Grads Party Into Night but Stay Safe and Sober

As a hard-driving band filled the auditorium with music described as a Southern California blend of ex-punk rock, soul, calypso and African tribal chants, an exuberant Kelly Clasen explained the significance of the all-night graduation party at Torrey Pines High School.

“The point,” said the 18-year-old Clasen, “is to let us all come together as a group one last time. If we weren’t here everybody would be partying in their own cliques--the new waves, the trendies, the rich people, the rockers, the reggaes, jocks, preppies, the individuals--and that’s when things go bad.

“This way, they can go wild and still stay sober.”

Nearby, in a room done up as Rick’s Cafe Americain, complete with roulette, blackjack and craps tables, and a 10-foot tall replica of Bogie himself, another freshly graduated senior, Danell van Dyke, was equally blunt.

“Many of the kids, if they weren’t at this party, would be in Tijuana, spending the night dancing and drinking, and then driving home,” she said. “The kids in my crowd don’t drink, but most of the others do.”

A Dangerous Time

The Torrey Pines party is another indication that parents and others realize that the period between mid-May and late June is a dangerous one for high school students, when alcohol becomes part of the season’s proms and grad parties.

The undisputed champion of graduation activities is still a trip to Disneyland, with part of the attraction being the park’s supervision and ban on under-age drinking. Students from about 40 schools in San Diego County will spend a night at Disneyland this graduation season.

“You can’t beat Disneyland for fun and safety,” said Don Phillips, principal of Vista High School. “There is no drinking, and no driving, and the parents have nothing to worry about it. We’ve been doing it for six years and it gets bigger each year.”

Still, the well-chaperoned private party idea also has become increasingly popular, particularly in Orange County, where proximity to the Magic Kingdom may have dimmed its allure.

In San Diego County, the idea has taken hold at three of the area’s most affluent schools: San Dieguito High in Encinitas, La Jolla High and Torrey Pines, which draws students from Del Mar, North City West, Solana Beach, Rancho Santa Fe and Cardiff.

The Thursday bash at Torrey Pines featured lavish African safari decorations, three dance bands (the Untouchables, Borracho y Loco, and Otis Day & The Knights), a disc jockey from radio station XTRA, an African dance troupe from the Wild Animal Park, two magicians, a continuous showing of the Humphrey Bogart film “Casablanca,” three caricaturists, a tattoo artist doing washable tattoos, a carnival midway, several raffles and a large supply of pizza, burritos, frozen yogurt and soft drinks.

CHP Likes the Idea

“Sometimes, with the way society is today, you’ve got to make things pretty enticing to get the kids’ attention,” said Jerry Bohrer, public affairs officer for the San Diego County division of the California Highway Patrol, which actively encourages “safe and sober” graduation activities.

In San Diego County, during May and June, 1986, there were four alcohol-related fatal accidents and 52 injury accidents involving teen-agers 15 to 18 years old. In 1985, during the same months, the count was 39 injury accidents, and in 1984 the tally was one fatality and 41 injury accidents.

The Escondido-based chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving this year distributed yellow warning cards for florist shops and formal wear stores countywide to slip in with the corsages and tuxedos students rented for their proms. The CHP distributed 10,000 bumper strips and 5,000 posters calling for sober graduations.

Ann Ernst, co-chairwoman of Torrey Pines Grad Night 1987, got involved in planning the school’s extravaganza after her daughter, Elizabeth, was seriously injured in an accident along Highway 101 in Solana Beach. The car in which she and four other girls were riding was struck by a drinking driver.

She suffered a fractured pelvis and a punctured lung, underwent three surgeries, and walked on crutches for three months. Thursday night she was among the graduates.

“Beth’s accident showed us that it can happen to anyone,” Ernst said. “I knew it was time to start doing something.”

‘From Party to Party’

“If we didn’t have this party,” said parental volunteer Pat Haeckel, “a lot of the students would spend the night driving from party to party, with a lot of drinking and who knows what else. That’s what we want to avoid.”

The party rules were simple: no booze, no drugs, no crashers, no returning once you left. The cost was $35 per person, but no one was turned away just because they could not pay. All but two dozen of the 450 graduates signed up, the best attendance in the four years Torrey Pines has had a grad party.

All-night parties aren’t cheap. Ernst estimated the Torrey Pines party cost $25,000, which included the ticket payments and the value of donated materials and labor.

A local nursery donated several truckloads of shrubs, ferns and small trees, and listed among the party’s patrons were the Douglas Allred Co. development firm and the Cecil B. DeMille Trust. The list of companies donating materials would fill a Chamber of Commerce directory.

Parents worked for six months borrowing, scrounging and improvising the decorations and costumes after the students, voting in their government and economics classes, chose African Safari over a train theme or a Chinese motif. More than a hundred parents were involved in one way or another.

The CHP’s Bohrer was not involved in the Torrey Pines party but noted that it included the essential ingredient for heading off adolescent trouble: mature parental involvement.

“Some of these parental attitudes are a bit out of kilter when it comes to prom nights and grad nights,” said Bohrer, talking not necessarily of Torrey Pines but of parents throughout the county. “I’ve had parents tell me they plan to hire limousines with fully-stocked bars or ask whether it’s OK to host parties where kids will be served alcohol. I don’t understand parents like that.”

Back at Torrey Pines, Jacob Brewer, 23, painter-carpenter and lead singer for Borracho y Loco, provided an eclectic description of the group’s music and then surveyed the hundreds of dancing and whooping students and expressed his approval.

“The whole idea,” he said, while taking a breather between high-voltage sets, “is to cut it loose, blow it out, tighten it up, and live to tell about it.”