Reigning Miss America Nina Davuluri has urged a Pennsylvania school district to reconsider its decision to suspend an 18-year-old high school senior who asked her to be his prom date during a school assembly.

According to The York Dispatch, the Indian-American beauty posted a message on the Miss America Organization’s official Facebook page saying that she reached out to the administrators of Central York High School to ask them to reevaluate the three-day in-school suspension given to the student, whose name is Patrick Farves.

Officials of the school claim that they had been aware of Farves’ plan to ask Davuluri to the prom and warned him against doing it. As punishment for Farves’ defiance, the school decided to issue him the suspension.

A video uploaded online shows Farves approaching Davuluri and giving her a plastic flower. His fellow students in the audience cheered Farves on as he asked the beauty queen to the school prom. Davuluri graciously accepted the flower but declined Farves’ invitation because her travel schedule does not  permit her to attend the school event.

Partrick Farves asks Miss America to be his prom date

Farves’ suspension requires him to stay put in a classroom and work on his own. He expressed regret over his stunt because he said that it might have overshadowed Davuluri’s efforts to promote diversity. As the first ever Indian-American winner of the Miss America pageant, Davuluri was trying to send a strong message that places importance on a person’s ideals instead of divisive factors such as religious beliefs and the color of one’s skin.

The 18-year-old student is himself a product of a mixed race marriage – his father is black and his mother is white. Despite the massive wave of support that he has been getting from the online world, specifically Twitter and Facebook, Farves said that he remains date-less for his school’s prom on May 10^th.

Image via Nina Davuluri (Miss America), Twitter