An ACLU lawyer is sticking up for a Boston-area high school student who was told by her vice principal to cover up her “All The Cool Girls Are Lesbians” t-shirt.
Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney for ACLU Massachusetts told the Daily News she sent the school a letter on Monday, "to just give them some additional information about the law."
"The only disruption," she said of the t-shirt, "was the administrator telling her not to wear it."
The law in Massachussets, she said is among the most stringent in the U.S. in allowing free speech in school.
The brouhaha over the shirt occurred in January when an unnamed high school sophomore at Lynn English High School was sent to the office after a teacher spotted her wearing the shirt in school, The Lynn Daily Item reported.
The vice principal, Joseph O'Hanagan, told the student to cover up the shirt, decribing it it as "political" and "offensive" to some people, the student claimed in a letter to the town's Mayor and School Committee Chairman.
"Well, frankly I'm the one who feels offended," she wrote in the letter, adding: "The word lesbian is not inappropriate. Saying it is, is calling homosexuality inappropriate."
Wunsch told the Daily News she was relieved to see that most school officials agreed with the teen.
The student did not contact the ACLU personally, Wunsch said, but the organization wanted to weigh in on the issue after reading about it in the news.
In an interview with the Daily Item, the school's principal, Thomas Strangie, said there hadn't been a problem since the January incident — but added he stood by his vice principal's decision.
"The [school\] policy says anything that is deemed disruptive," he told the newspaper. "This could have been disruptive."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/aclu-student-wear-cool-girls-lesbians-t-shirt-article-1.1038088#ixzz1p5LRkhdk
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire