Tag: high school

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Mississippi High School Bans Same-Sex Dates At Prom

Students at a Mississippi high school were given required attendance paperwork in order to attend prom that included language that clearly banned same-sex dates.

Students at a Mississippi high school were given required attendance paperwork in order to attend prom that included language that clearly banned same-sex dates.

Via Yahoo News:

Students at Tremont Attendance Center in Mississippi were told to sign paperwork that included language stating that guests attending the Apr. 26th prom must be “of the opposite sex.” The rule was emphasized twice — in capitalized, bold letters — on the two-page form, and under a safety waiver that required student and parent signatures.

High school prom organizers that excluded same-sex couples from the upcoming dance deny the rule was homophobic.

“Guests must be 10th-grade–21 years old and of the opposite sex,” read the rule.

The form was shared on Facebook by Jack McCrory, a Tremont graduate whose niece is a current student. “From the open-minded and tolerant folks of the Tremont prom committee,” he wrote on Monday.

Trae Wiygul, the superintendent of Itawamba County Schools, did not respond to Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment.

He told WTVA, “The Itawamba County School District does not sponsor or endorse proms. If prom is being held, it is a private affair hosted by parents. Since this matter allegedly concerns a parent, who is also a teacher, any activity that person may have done during school hours concerning a prom was outside the scope of employment and is being investigated.”

Wiygul said a teacher who passed out the forms is being investigated.

According to WTVA, a parent involved with prom said the rule was an attempt at “crowd control,” so students could not purchase tickets for unofficial dates. “That’s not relevant to a person’s sex,” McCrory tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

A Facebook post, allegedly written by a Tremont student and sent to Yahoo Lifestyle, says the paperwork was passed out by “multiple teachers” prefacing an intercom announcement from the principal, which warned that students could not bring same-sex dates.

Joshua Tom, the legal director of the ACLU of Mississippi, tells Yahoo Lifestyle, “Preventing same-sex couples from attending prom is discriminatory and unconstitutional. We’d advise that the county doesn’t repeat its discriminating actions from nine years ago or face legal jeopardy.”

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High School Officials Break Into Bathroom Stall Being Used By Transgender Student

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A video posted to social media appears to show school officials breaking into a bathroom stall as a transgender high school student is using the bathroom.

According to The Daily Dot, the student originally posted the video to their social media but it has since gone viral. Her name isn’t being used as she’s apparently a minor.

The one-minute video, shot from the student’s perspective inside the stall, shows a crowbar or broomstick being used to reach over the door of the stall and unlatch it.

As this is happening the student says, “I’m using the bathroom, and look at them; I’m using the bathroom and they just violated me!”

“I am so scared and violated right now. They just walked in the bathroom while I was using the bathroom for no reason.”

The video was shared on Twitter by activist Kenidra Woods. Watch below.

You know, most of the people who oppose trans folks using a bathroom say their concern is about being harassed in a stall. And here are folks doing exactly that to a trans student…?

“I’m not personally in touch with the student, but in her video, she asked for people to share it far and wide,” Woods told the Daily Dot. “So, I made it my priority to share it because it infuriated me to my core. No one should be treated in the manner she was treated.”

While it’s possible there’s more to the story, it is difficult to believe that prying open a bathroom stall door on a student is the best possible approach to this situation. The officials or hall monitors couldn’t wait until the student exited the stall?

The issue of bathroom use by transgender students has been in the news frequently in recent years, especially since the Trump administration reversed an Obama-era policies that recommended transgender students be allowed to use the bathroom that aligned with their gender identity.

The student apparently posted follow-up videos to Facebook which appeared to identify the school as Osseo Senior High School in Osseo, Minnesota.

According to The Daily Dot, school officials have not commented on the video.

The story becomes more complicated as LGBTQNation reports someone who claims to be the sister of the student took to her Facebook to criticize the trans student’s actions.

In the sister’s post, misgendering the trans student throughout, the sister says the trans student has “a bathroom of [their] own to use whenever [they] wants to use it because [they] doesn’t feel comfortable using a men’s bathroom[…] because other girls won’t feel comfortable.” She also says her sibling had been in the bathroom for “like, an hour.”

The sister later posted a message from their mother consistently referring to the trans student with male pronouns while claiming to fully support the student being transgender.

The mother goes on to write that the trans student “doesn’t realize is that [she’s] not the only one who has been effected by all [she] has done in the last 24hrs and the rollercoaster [she] brought us on.”

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Wisconsin High School Students Throw Full-On ‘Sig Heil’ In Prom Photo

(Click image to enlarge)

Folks are kind of flummoxed by a photo taken at the junior prom of Wisconsin’s Baraboo High School showing the class’s male students doing a ‘sig heil.’

Law & Crime points out the event was last spring, but the photo just came to light when it was posted to the Twitter account @GoBaraboo that has since been been made private.

It was posted with the caption, “We even got the black kid to throw it up #BarabooProud.”

One guy in the front was clearly doing the sign for white power:

Vice contributor Jules Suzdaltsev asked Twitter to help him do a deep dive into the matter, and he began getting private messages from students at the school saying they had seen and heard a lot of racist language while attending the school.

One student who graduated from BHS this spring wrote Suzdaltsev saying he could “100% support the claims of racism at that school.”

“The use of the n-word was pretty common among a lot of white students, whether jokingly or not,” he added.

Another told Suzdaltsev that the day after Donald Trump was elected, students were yelling “White Power!” in the hallways.

Folks did note that one student, in the upper right hand corner of the photo, was clearly not having the moment.

Suzdaltsev spoke with the student, Jordan Blue, who said the photo was taken so quickly he couldn’t leave. But he also shared that he’d been bullied by his classmates for years.

“My name is Jordan Blue, I am the boy captured in the photo to the far right. The photo was taken during our Junior Prom Photos. I clearly am uncomfortable, with what was happening. I couldn’t leave the photo as it was taken within 5 seconds. The photographer took the photos telling us to make the sign, I knew what my morals were and it not to salute something I firmly didn’t believe in. I attend BHS, these classmates have bullied me since entering middle school, I have struggled with it my entire life and nothing has changed. These are the boy of Class of 2019, nothing has been done and my question is… with anything ever be done. I truly & firmly believe we need to make a change to this horrible act, it need to stop. Bullying. Immaturity. And just taking things as a “joke”…”

According to Suzdaltsev, the photographer (identified as local motorcycle photographer Peter Gust) has taken the photo album down from his website and issued an odd message calling out “malevolent behavior on the part of some in society.” He seems to be blaming the scandal on folks taking issue with the idea of telling students to do a Nazi salute.

The photo has even received international attention as the Twitter account for the Auschwitz Memorial tweeted, “This is why every single day we work hard to educate.”

Baraboo School District Superintendent Dr. Lori Mueller issued this statement:

The Barabook School District sent the following letter to parents this morning in response to a photo on social media.

Dear Parents/Guardians of Baraboo School District Students:

Early this morning, a photo that was taken last spring of some Barabook School District students who appear to be making extremely inappropriate gestures began circulating on social media. The District has confirmed at this time that the photo was not taken on school property or at a school-sponsored event.

The school district is investigating this situation and is working with parents, staff and local authorities. If the gesture is what it appears to be, the district will pursue any and all available and appropriate actions, including legal, to address the issue.

With that, we want to be very clear: the Baraboo School District is a hate-free environment where all people, regardless of race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or ancestry, are respected and celebrated.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lori Mueller, Superintendent

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Progress For Schools Becoming More LGBTQ Inclusive Is Slowing

GSA bus in Pride parade (image via Flickr/jglsongs – CC License)

According to the 2017 National School Climate Survey from GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network), progress in making schools more inclusive and less hostile for LGBTQ students has slowed down after years of improvement.

The survey polled more than 23,000 students across the United States ages 13-21 between April and August of 2017.

The average age of participants was 15.6 years-old and four in ten of those surveyed identified as gay or lesbian.

The results of the survey showed that after years of declining harassment, the improving climate seems to have plateaued (see graphic below).

The data from the survey shows:

• Almost 60% of LGBTQ students felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation; 44% because of their gender expression

• Almost 35% of LGBTQ students say they missed a day of school in the past month because they felt unsafe

• 4 in 10 avoided gender-segregated spaces like bathrooms or locker rooms due to safety concerns

• 98.5% of LGBTQ students have heard the term “gay” used in a negative way; 70% say they hear these remarks frequently

• 70.1% of LGBTQ students say they’ve experienced verbal harassment based on sexual orientation; almost 60% based on gender expression

• Almost 30% say they’ve been physically harassed (pushed, shoved) based on sexual orientation; 24.4% based on gender expression

• 12.4% of LGBTQ students say they’ve been physically assaulted (punched, kicked) based on sexual orientation; 11.2% based on gender expression

• 42.2% of LGBTQ students say they considered dropping out of school due to harassment

• 48.7% of LGBTQ students have experienced cyberbullying in the past year

• 57.3% of LGBTQ students reported being sexually harassed in the past year at school

The majority of LGBTQ students (55.3%) who were victimized in school did not report the incident believing no effective intervention would happen or the situation could become worse.

Of the students who did report an incident, 60.4% say school staff did nothing or told the student to ignore it.

One piece of good news: more students reported having a Gay/Straight Alliance (53.3%) at their school than ever before.

The data shows that when a school offers a GSA, LGBTQ students were less likely to hear homophobic or transphobic slurs; saw more intervention by school personnel; and were less likely to feel unsafe at school due to their sexual orientation.

Head over to GLSEN to read the full report.

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Dating Out Athletes Celebrate Final High School Dance Together

Hunter Sigmund (L) and Jake Bain (R) in their requisite senior prom pic

For the students dancing the night away at St. Louis’ John Burroughs High School senior prom, openly gay couple Jake Bain and Hunter Sigmund were nothing new to see. This was the twosome’s fourth school dance together.

Sigmund, a swimmer and water polo player told Outsports, “It was my fourth school dance with Jake and I couldn’t have imagined a better way to spend our last high school dance.”

As the school’s only openly gay couple, the students and faculty have treated the two athletes just like everyone else, says Bain.

More from Outsports:

“This is the second year he and I have gone together, as well as to our homecoming dance the past two years, so this wasn’t the first time,” Bain, the school’s high school football captain, said.

“We have been the only openly gay couple at Burroughs since I’ve been here, but it isn’t a problem at all at our school. People treat us the same. It is nice to be able to go to prom with whoever you want and not have to worry about what other people might think.”

When the hideously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church haters announced they would protest Jake for the national attention he garnered as an out star football player, the school, faculty and community rallied around him.

This fall will see Jake begin his college football career for Indiana State University while Hunter heads to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an honors student.

Could they be any cuter?
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SNL: Theater Nerds Get Down At The “Crucible Cast Party”

Ok, I can post this in full disclosure that not only did I know these folks when I was in high school, I WAS this crowd.

Saturday Night Live sends up the always painful to remember “high school play cast party.” And they nail it right down to the chaste “back rub” that never went anywhere.

Rock on!

Love Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rap in the middle of the segment.

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Toronto: LGBTQ Posters Cool Transformation When Photographed With Flash

This is pretty cool. God knows the younger crowd likes tech-y, new things.

Via Adweek:

New posters have gone up in Toronto District School Board schools, which include 76,000 middle school and high school students. Launched by LGBTQ advocacy group Toronto Pflag, the posters depict a rainbow that spells out the LGBTQ acronym: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Straight, Queer and 2-Spirited.

When students use the flash on their camera phones to take a picture of the poster, the words are suddenly accompanied by nouns that illustrate LGBTQ folks are people they know, respect and love.

“We wanted to send a positive message to students that we are all more than just our gender identity and sexual orientation,” says Toronto Pflag president Anne Creighton. “Our mission is to get students talking about these things, so the novel and shareable nature of this poster was a perfect fit for our message.”

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Infectious Venezuelam Youth Orchestra Kills It With “Mambo” From West Side Story

A Facebook friend just reminded me of this clip featuring Maestro Gustavo Dudamel conducting West Side Story’s “Mambo” with the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan Brass Ensemble, plus Alexis Cárdenas & Ensemble.

There is no way anyone who really knows me could watch this just once. The talent and energy is beyond infectious.

By the way, did I point out these are high school musicians? Over 700,000 kids across the country in Venezuela are in music programs, and almost every village has a youth orchestra.

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South Carolina High School Officer Fired For Violating Proper Procedures

Sheriff Leon Lott is currently giving a press conference egarding the South Carolina deputy who flipped a female high school student’s desk over then dragged/threw her across the room.

Sounds like he saying a little of, “Basically, she had it coming.”

As the press conference goes on, he’s drawing an appropriate hard line about the deputy but is stressing the female student ‘started’ the incident.

I’m just not convinced dragging and throwing a 5’6″ female teenager across a room is justified because she wouldn’t leave her desk.

Sheriff Lott also mentioned that the procedure Deputy Fields violated was in throwing the student across the room, he lost contact with the student. Not so much the violent nature of his behavior but that he let go of the student.

Hmm….