NEWSCENSORSHIP

The country's leading safe schools organization on Friday criticized a "neutrality" policy at Minnesota's largest school district that prevents faculty from addressing LGBT issues with students.

Policies like the "neutrality" policy at the Anoka-Hennepin School District "have a chilling effect on LGBT students," said Dr. Eliza Byard, Executive Director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network in an interview with Change.org.

"Research has shown that teachers in states that have anti-LGBT policies are less likely to respond to the harassment of LGBT students, and students are more likely to report hearing negative remarks," Byard said.

Controversy over the Minnesota district's rule instructing teachers and staff to take a "neutral" stance on matters of sexuality came to a head last week, when a federal lawsuit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Faegre & Benson, LLP.

Texas high school student Bianca "Nikki" Peet is speaking out for inclusive safe schools once again, this time to help students at Clovis High School in New Mexico fight to have a Gay-Straight Alliance approved on campus.

Earlier this year, Nikki, a student at Flour Bluff High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, was denied a request to start a GSA on her campus -- but in March, Nikki, along with the ACLU, the GSA at Texas A&M and the over 55,000 Change.org  supporters like you, won her fight to have the GSA approved.

Now, students at Clovis High School in New Mexico are facing a similar struggle, and Nikki Peet wants to help change that. She's now spearheading the Change.org petition backing the students and is asking for your support.

Last night, the Clovis, New Mexico school board voted unanimously to ban all extra-curricular clubs during school hours on campus. Students at Clovis High School attended the school board meeting in support of starting a local Gay-Straight Alliance on campus.

Clovis High School student Steven De Los Santos spoke at the Clovis School Board Meeting last night about why a  Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) was needed, saying that the club is important for the community.

The ban now removes all non-extracurricular clubs during the school day and limits some clubs if approved by school administrators to meet only before or after school if space is available.  This ban will affect clubs such as the Chess Club, Boy Scouts, DECA, Band and other groups that currently meet on campus.

A local school board in New Mexico could vote tonight to disallow all extra curricular clubs in the Clovis Municipal School District to avoid recognizing a request from a student at Clovis High School to form a Gay-Straight Alliance on campus.

You may remember a story we told you about here at Change.org about Nikki Peet, a senior at Flour Bluff High School in Corpus Christi, Texas who was was denied a request to start a Gay-Straight Alliance on campus. Nikki Peet, with the help of  local community supporters such as the GSA at Texas A&M and thousands of Change.org supporters like you was able to create a gay-straight alliance after all.

Now students at Clovis High School in New Mexico need your help.

Officials at an Aurora, Colo. high school are scrambling to explain away the controversy over the principal's decision to shutter the school newspaper and yank the faculty advisor from the program.

But they just can't keep their answers straight -- and Overland High School students maintain that the principal angrily told them that the newspaper would stop printing because he was unhappy with a story they were printing about the death of a fellow student.

To reporters, however, the district is singing a different tune. Will Overland High School's The Scout stop being printed due to budget concerns, not censorship? That's what a district rep told the Denver Post on March 27. School spokeswoman Tustin Amole said that students "did not have the money to publish any more issues after the upcoming senior issue" -- an excuse students say they'd never heard before.

A Colorado high school principal has shut down the school's award-winning student newspaper -- for truthfully reporting on the death of a classmate. Telling students that their story was "too big for a high school paper," he yanked the students' faculty advisor from her position, changed their journalism class to a non-publishing class and shut down the paper.

But Principal Leon Lundie of Overland High School in Aurora, Colo, may have picked the wrong students to intimidate. The students behind The Overland Scout have enlisted the ACLU and the Student Press Law Center to come to their defense. You can help add pressure by signing this Change.org petition, which will send an email to Principal Lundie telling him that censoring student journalism isn't just unethical - it's against the law.

Colorado is one of a handful of states that specifically guarantees student journalists - and their advisers - the protection of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. (Read the text of the Colorado Student Free Expression law here.)

But Principal Lundie blatantly disregarded the law in an attempt to silence a benign story the students reported about a fellow student who died as a result of an injury during a wrestling tournament, students say. Even though the students backed up the story with interviews and research - and even provided Lundie with the student's death certificate - he reportedly told them that the story lacked balance and couldn't be printed.

Amidst the grief, confusion and finger-pointing that surround the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others on Jan. 8, another story in Tucson is also making national headlines.

Because of a new state law, the Tucson Unified School District has fewer than two months to get rid of its Mexican American Studies program. If they don't, they risk losing millions in state funding.

The "ethnic studies ban" - HB 2281 - passed last year and went into effect on the first of the year. It seeks to eliminate any courses taught in public schools that are directed to a specific ethnic group and "promote resentment" or "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government." Tucson's Mexican American studies program is the only program targeted.

In reality, the law is a thinly-veiled attempt to eliminate the telling of Mexican American history and heritage to the very students that could most benefit from it - that is, Hispanic students going to school at Tucson's embattled school district.

If Mark Twain were alive today, he would likely tell Dr. Alan Gribben to back off his books.

Gribben, a Twain scholar working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish the latest edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is planning to release these editions with some notable changes: Twain’s use of the N-word will be changed to “slave,” the use of “injun” will be changed to “Indian,” and “half-breed” will be changed to “half-blood.”

In a recent NPR interview, Gribben argued that the repeated use of such offensive terms makes readers uncomfortable and, he says, deters potential readers from engaging with Twain’s books.

Gribben notes that the offensive language has caused Twain’s literature to be banned from most public education reading lists.

Now while Gribben certainly deserves credit for asking the right questions whereby precipitating a conversation that should have happened a long time ago, he has unfortunately come up with the wrong answer. He's overlooking (or perhaps dismissing) an important follow-up question: Why would readers be uncomfortable by such language?

How important is Monday's national holiday honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the outspoken minister who became the face of the American civil rights movement?

Too important to use as a severe weather make-up day, say civil rights groups. After the Rock Hill, S.C. school district announced they'd be holding school this Monday despite the fact that it's a national holiday celebrating the memory of Dr. King, the local NAACP and a faith-based civil rights group protested. They're urging parents to keep their children out of school on the holiday, and plan to hold peaceful demonstrations on Friday and on Sunday, S.C.'s The Herald reports.

Historically reluctant to embrace the civil rights movement -- South Carolina was the last state to declare MLK Day a paid holiday, in 2000 -- the decision to treat the day just like any other carries a significance to great to ignore.

They're slimy, they're foul and they're equal-opportunity offenders: they're the Westboro Baptist Church, the cult-like anti-gay group that protests at U.S. military funerals, among other events, with signs like "Thank God For Dead Soldiers" and "God Hates Fags."

This incredibly creepy bunch has created a sure-fire way to garner publicity for their cause. They announce in advance that they'll be protesting at a specific place; that announcement gets major media coverage; and the local community rallies to counter-protest. Whether or not they show up (and many times they don't), the "Church" gets more exposure for its hateful message.

This stops now, says a passionate activist from Searsport, Maine -- who also happens to be a 17-year-old high school student. Zach Parker's campaign against the Westboro Baptist Church has gone all the way from a project for his senior history class to proposing a federal law against the group.

It's an inspiring story that shows how one small voice can unify a community.