This week's viral sensation involved a Bishop McDevitt student who was banned from her prom because she wore a tuxedo instead of traditional attire for young women.

The story quickly soared across the Internet, appearing in Associated Press reports and on Seventeen magazine's website.

This prompted a public school in York to invite the student, Aniya Wolf, to its prom later this month.

The invitation, which Wolf has accepted, shows what William Penn High School in York "is all about," according to the social studies teacher who initiated the plan.

Of course, like any Internet story, Wolf's exclusion prompted a flurry of comments from people whose main occupation is commenting on what they read on the Internet.

Aniya Wolf

And in those comments Bishop McDevitt played the villain.

What I never saw (and trust me, I don't spend much time with comments so it might have been there) was anyone drawing a distinction between Bishop McDevitt and your generic public school.

McDevitt is a private school. People chose to go there. They pay big money to go there. Being a private school gives McDevitt the right to enforce rules and regulations that wouldn't fly in a public school.

For one thing, McDevitt students wear uniforms. I know this because I see them after school in my local Sheetz wearing those uniforms. Most of the gals wear skirts, but I assume there is a pants option since Wolf said she wears pants to school.

This is a big change since my days in a Catholic school. We too wore uniforms. Ugly uniforms that consisted of a navy blue skirt, long-sleeved white blouse and navy vest with the school emblem on our chests. Hot or cold, we wore those uniforms. We were not allowed to wear pants. We were not allowed to wear a cardigan sweater. We were not allowed to roll up our sleeves. Our skirts had to fall below our knees. Occasionally a nun would grab a group of us and insist we kneel on the floor. If your skirt didn't touch the floor, consequences followed.

We didn't like the rules. We broke them whenever possible. We kept sweaters in our lockers to wear to and from school. We rolled up our waistbands to defy the knee-length rule. That's what we called rebelling.

I'm quite sure we had prom rules as well. I know if someone wanted to invite an outsider as a date, the outsider had to pass muster in advance with the school administration. I'm sure we had rules about dresses, as well. I don't remember them specifically, but I'm quite positive we couldn't show up in anything strapless.

We followed the rules because we chose to attend that school - or our parents chose for us.

One of the big rules I remember about uniforms involved slips. We had to wear a slip under our skirts. At the time, it was fashionable to wear something called pettipants, which looked like knee-length bloomers.

Our school banned them. Occasionally a girl would wear them, the nuns would catch her and she was sent home.

When that happened, Mom and Dad didn't call the newspaper or the local TV station. They grounded the girl for the weekend, told her to put on her slip and sent her back with her chin on her chest.

Coming from that background, I find it difficult to jump on the "poor Aniya Wolf" bandwagon.

If she attended my local public school, I'd be her cheerleader. But she chose McDevitt, a Catholic school with rules, and from where I sit, that means she ought to follow them.

NANCY ESHELMAN: columnist1@verizon.net