New Mexico School Board Could Ban All Clubs To Block Gay-Straight Alliance

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.

In comments to the Albuquerque Journal, Clovis Municipal School District Superintendent Terry Myers said that the school board meeting tonight about disbanding all non-extra curricular clubs is unrelated to recent attempts by students to form a gay-straight alliance on campus. But, the ACLU-NM thinks that this is actually an attempt to curtail any gay-straight alliances at Clovis High School.

In a letter to  Clovis School Board, the ACLU-NM Staff Attorney Alexandra Freedman Smith said, “Non-curricular activities are a vital part of any educational program and provide students with enriching and rewarding experiences."  The ACLU-NM also asked that the school board keep all non-extra curricular clubs, saying that, “At Clovis High School, you have non-curricular service clubs, religious clubs, a chess club, and other similarly engaging groups. To simply discontinue these clubs would deprive all students of a rich and diverse set of activities to engage in outside of class. Eliminating these clubs would doubtlessly diminish the vibrancy of the high school community in Clovis.”

While speaking with Change.org, a Clovis Municipal School District representative said that all students are welcome.  When asked if gay-straight alliances are part of the school, the representative said she did not believe any were.

According to the school district's Handbook, students who wish to form student-initiated clubs which are recognized but not sponsored by their school because their purposes and goals are not related to the curriculum but are permitted to met at school during non-instructional time must ask school principal for approval only.

Stay tuned at Change.org as we keep you up to date on this story, and sign this petition in support of students' rights to form Gay-Straight Alliances at Clovis and beyond.