Reply #1: It seemed to me to be an 'end of an era' thing.

[Iggo]

A lot of teenage movies have that theme. Graduation and Prom and the like fit so neatly into those stories.

So anyway, my take on it is that the practice is dying out. But O'Bannon has this chip on his shouder from when it happened to him when he was a freshman. And he's been waiting his turn. And he's been building it up as the be-all-end-all of his teenage existence. When it doesn't turn out to be everything he'd built it up to be, that's the payoff.