Just out of curiosity, is the point of this to punish the girl, and make the other students blame/ostracise her, or do the school simply want to dodge the issue altogether, by not holding the event and therefore not open themselves up to legal action?
I don’t care what their reasons or reasoning is, they are wrong on several levels - same as the were when they used the same approach to race. If I say much more I’m going to get a time-out for it so I’ll just stop here.
I think much more the former than the latter.
I agree with Czarcasm. This is meant to piss everyone off towards this girl and make her suffer even more. How incredibly intolerant and cruel. Guess they just didn’t have the stones to make a stand against just one person and possibly deal with the legal (and monetary) ramifications.
I would say probably both.
My guess would be the latter. They’re covering their asses.
Cancel the entire prom?! How 20th century. They should be burning her and her girlfriend at the stake like they used to… at the prom.
Jesus loves a good stake-burnin’.
Maybe they just want to make themselves look like troglodytes, and confirm stereotypes of their home state and region. They’re accomplishing that.
Aside from the legal problems, they’re trying to avoid complaints from all the people who could get pissed off at them: people who want them to change the policy and people who don’t want them to change the policy. Schools are prone to doing stupid and risk averse things like this: faced with a choice they consider unpleasant, they’d prefer to punt. So they’re having no prom, and they’ll let a private person who with no legal liability take care of it.
I’m surprised they allow dancing.
Of course, “distracting to the educational process” is legalese code for the only valid reason for discriminating in garments, jewelry, etc. – one may do so if and only if the alleged article of clothing or accessory will distract other students from their studies.
Which makes me wonder what the “educational process” of a prom might have been. One hopes the students have learned a lot from this experience, though.
The school was probably getting sick of being bombarded on all sides by parents, ACLU, students, townspeople, you name it. Being forced to be the moderator in a huge mess of people with varying opinions and threats I’d be tempted to do the same thing. “You know what, F all of you, nobody wants to play nice nobody gets to play at all. Prom canceled.”
I’ve done the same thing when my nieces wanted to play Candyland. “I want to be blue!”, “No, I want to be blue.” (crying)
“You know what? Nobody gets to be blue because I’m putting Candyland away and now nobody gets to play.”
Lightweight… everyone wants to be blue in Candyland? Stake burning.
That’d be my guess, too. They get to cancel and weasel out of it, and at the same time point to the couple and say, “See? It’s not our fault! It’s theirs!”
They saw that “Carrie” documentary and decided that is was better to be safe than sorry…
I think you hit the nail on the head. In one of my past jobs I had to work on issues involving the local school systems. They hate dealing with anything controversial, and when something like this comes up, they just want to nip it in the bud as quickly and easily as possible, even if doing so means pissing off a lot more people than they would have otherwise.
Maybe they were just concerned about the effects of second-hand lesbianism.
I’m sure someone in the neighborhood has a barn or something that could be used for the dance if the school won’t sponsor it. Of course, if they do that then John Lithgow might show up and try to ruin it for everyone.
Hasn’t there been a trend of alterna-proms anyhow? Yes, I know, there’s a new trend announced every time some magazine columnist runs out of real shit to comment about, but it is not unknown for students to arrange their own events. This would be a dodge against either school policy or ACLU interference.
If you want a better article about it, check the local paper here.
This whole thing just makes me sick. First Ceara Sturgis, who just wanted to wear a tuxedo for her senior picture: she was denied that, and the school ended up not even putting her picture in the yearbook. And now this. Damnitall, I love Mississippi, but there are parts of the state that have gotta come into the 21st century.
I just pray this doesn’t make her a target for retaliation.