Welcome, Patuxent Ridge senior parents! We're Carlton and Barbara Poindexter, and we are this year's co-chairs of the senior parents' committee. Our daughter Erin is a senior, which means that in a little over eight months she will walk across a stage, throw her cap in the air and become, officially, a high school graduate. We would like her, and every one of her 340-some classmates, to wake up the next morning safe and sound. That is the whole point of this page.

Carlton is a budget analyst with the federal government, which is why our spreadsheets balance. Barbara is the administrator of our church, which is why the meetings start on time. Between the two of us we have run a lot of things. We have never run a party for 340 eighteen-year-olds from eleven at night until five in the morning. Pray for us. Better yet, volunteer.

It's an all-night party for graduating seniors, right after the ceremony, with no alcohol and no drugs, run by parents. The seniors check in at 11 p.m. and the doors lock behind them. Nobody leaves until 5 a.m. unless a parent comes in person to sign them out. Inside, there's more food, music, games and prizes than they can get through in six hours, a hypnotist at 2 a.m. who will make the class president cluck like a chicken, and at the very end, a drawing for big prizes that you have to be in the room to win.

Why do it? Because every June the newspapers carry the same story: graduates killed or hurt on the roads on graduation night, after parties where somebody drank and then somebody drove. Schools all over the country have answered that story with all-night parties like this one, and Patuxent Ridge has had one every year since 1991. Not one of our seniors has been hurt on graduation night since. We would like to keep that record going.

The county hands out graduation dates in the winter. Ours will be in early June, and the party is that same night. Here's what we have so far:

• Where: the Oak Lantern Recreation Center. Gym, pool, game room, two meeting rooms and a big parking lot that buses can turn around in. Booked and deposit paid.
• Getting there: seniors go home after the ceremony, change, and are dropped off by 11. Or they ride the buses from the school lot at 10:30. No senior drives himself or herself and parks. Buses back to the school at 5:15 a.m.
• Inside: a DJ in the gym, swimming (with lifeguards), casino tables with play money, a caricature artist, karaoke, an inflatable obstacle course, a basketball tournament, a movie room for the ones who need to lie down, and food every two hours. The hypnotist is booked.
• Tickets: $25 per senior through April 1, $35 after. Nobody stays home because of money. If that's your family this year, call Ms. O'Shea at school, quietly, and it's handled.
• Rules: Patuxent Ridge seniors only. Bags checked at the door. Anyone who shows up under the influence is not admitted, and we call the parents.

Every senior who stays until 5 a.m. goes home with something. The big prizes are drawn at the end, and you must be in the room to win. Donated so far, and we thank every one of these neighbors:

• A 1993 Honda Civic, inspected and running, from a used car lot on Route 301 that would rather we not make a fuss (this is the grand prize, and yes, it's real)
• A desktop computer with a 15-inch monitor, for college, from a parent's company
• Two dorm refrigerators and a microwave
• Six $50 gift certificates from the mall
• A year of free oil changes
• A dozen free haircuts and four manicures from a salon on Main Street

Teresa McElwain chairs prizes and she is very good at asking. If you own a business, she's going to call you. Make it easy on yourself and e-mail us first.

A word about the name of the raffle, since several of you have asked. Carlton holds that, since our calendar began with the year 1 and not the year 0, the first thousand years ran through the year 1000, the second ran through the end of the year 2000, and the new millennium does not properly begin until the January after that. He has explained this at the dinner table, at church, at two committee meetings and to the man who came to fix the dryer.

Barbara holds that when all four numbers on the calendar change at midnight and the whole world throws a party, that is the new millennium, and that a man who works for the government should know better than to argue with the whole world.

Erin holds that she is graduating in the year 2000 no matter what anybody calls it, and could we please talk about something else.

The committee voted 22 to 1 to call it the Millennium Raffle. Carlton asked that his objection be entered in the minutes. It was.

1. Come to a meeting. Second Tuesday of every month, 7:30 p.m., school library. Next one: Tuesday, October 12.
2. Pick a committee and e-mail the chair. The list and the openings are on the Committees & Volunteers page.
3. Sell raffle tickets at work. Every family gets a book of ten.
4. Work a shift on the night. We need about 90 parents between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., in two-hour shifts. Parents of seniors work behind the scenes, not in the party rooms, so your child never has to see you there. That's a promise.
5. Write a check to "Patuxent Ridge Project Graduation 2000" and send it to school with your senior, attention Ms. O'Shea.