In the standard uniform of micro skirt and high heels, with the boys in baggy jeans and dirtied white runners, thousands of boisterous Junior Certificate students merged in cities and towns for a night of organised celebrations last night.
Where students mingled, members of An Garda Síochána usually followed, confiscating plastic bottles on Dublin buses, searching bags at random and holding intense stares outside premises licensed to sell alcohol.
From no-alcohol events in Bondi Beach in Stillorgan to the Ambassador on O'Connell Street and afar to Barcode in Fairview, students were continually overshadowed by the men and women in luminous yellow jackets.
At the no-alcohol "Scream" party in the Point, where artists such as Cascada, DJ Pulse, Scooter and Jazzy Jay performed, some 6,000 students were monitored by 100 security personnel, 16 Order of Malta representatives, two doctors, four paramedics and an undisclosed number of gardaí.
The minority, who earlier had carried bags of cans and alco-pops and had partaken in some outdoor drinking before travelling to the Point, were routinely assessed by security and removed to a side area. Parents were then contacted and asked to collect their child.
The expense of purchasing a new outfit, buying the "Scream" ticket and convincing parents of the pocket money requirement was not lost on Róisín Ó Raghallaigh, from Manor House School in Raheny. Friends Cormac Molloy, Dean McAvinue and Tony Gibbons, from Maynooth post-primary school, confessed that they too had been planning for September 13th for some weeks and had also given consideration to their dress code.
South of the Liffey, 450 students lining the walls of the Old Wesley rugby club in Donnybrook told of letters being sent home warning students not to drink, not to go into town and not to talk to the media.
As students Jennifer Duffy and Emma Durkan reflected on their collection of As, a Garda inspector paced up and down, surveying the crowd in the constant shadow of 20 security personnel. One good-natured security man would occasionally ask students: "How many As did you get? Five? Six? Seven? Right, you're to the top of the queue."