NEWSSTUDENT RIGHTS

[Editor's Note: Guest blogger Kit-Bacon Gressitt and her group created the Change.org petition "Act Against Hate at Cal State University San Marcos." You can find more of her writing at http://www.excusemeimwriting.com/]

Imagine opening what appears to be a college newspaper and finding a picture of yourself superimposed into a pornographic photo, with a description of sexual acts. Imagine how that would make you feel as you walk through campus, not knowing who was behind the anonymous tabloid, uncertain if the person looking at you across the classroom was the one who photoshopped your face into a scene of naked women.

This is what one student at Cal State University San Marcos is going through, and she is suffering this abuse due to two things:

Teen mothers are expected to fail. Just ask Bee Lavender, who, after she became pregnant at 18, remembers a swift and merciless change in the way most people treated her:

"It was a profound shock to go from being the good kid, the honours student, the girl who talked about youth leadership on television, to being perceived as human detritus," Lavender wrote in The Guardian.

Lavender dropped out of college and moved back home. But you wouldn't know it today if you met her. An acclaimed writer and activist, her books include a memoir about danger titled Lessons in Taxidermy and the anthologies Breeder and Mamaphonic. She's the publisher of the website Hipmama.com and is the founder of Girl-Mom.com, an advocacy project for teen parents. She's also taking a stand today for another teenage mother, Kymberly Wimberley of McGehee, Arkansas.

You spoke up for equality, took action online and in New Mexico and were heard: Students at Clovis High School have won their fight to have a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) on campus!

In a letter dated May 4th,  the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico heard from Cuddy & McCarthy, LLP, the law firm representing the Clovis Municipal School District, saying that the superintendent had instructed Clovis High School's principal to allow the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) on campus as a non-curricular club.

“Please consider this letter as the “approval” you requested and permission for G/SA to immediately begin holding meetings after school at Clovis High School… Supt. Myers has directed the principal of Clovis High School to immediately contact the G/SA “applicants” and make arrangements for the G/SA to begin holding its meetings at the time and place requested in the application.”

This change is effective immediately, meaning that Clovis High School student Steven De Los Santos could begin to hold meetings as soon as Friday.

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.

UPDATE: 7:24 p.m., Tuesday, April 26: Kelley Williams-Bolar has just released a statement through her attorney, David Singleton of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center:

Original Post: Most nights, Tanya McDowell sleeps in a minivan. Other nights, she sleeps at a shelter or at a friend's house. So when it was time for her 5-year-old son, A.J., to go to school, she wrote down her babysitter's address to sign him up for kindergarten.

Little did she know, sending A.J. to kindergarten at Brookside Elementary School in Norwalk, Connecticut could mean 20 years in jail and a $15,000 penalty for the unemployed single mom. Tanya was arrested this month and charged with first-degree larceny for allegedly "stealing her son's education." Norwalk authorities say that since A.J. doesn't live within district limits, it's illegal for him to attend kindergarten in the district - and his mom is a criminal for enrolling him there. A local activist has created a petition on Change.org, urging Norwalk officials to drop the charges and stop punishing a mother who wanted what was best for her child.

"I'm still in shock," Tanya said in an interview with the Norwalk Patch this week. "What did I do wrong? I just want the best for my kid. It's like any mom or any dad out there."

The fact that a parent could do jail time simply for sending her child to public school is reminiscent of the story of Kelley Williams-Bolar of Ohio. Nearly 100,000 Change.org members signed a petition started on the site early this year, demanding that Ohio Governor John Kasich pardon Williams-Bolar, who was convicted of a felony for sending her children to a neighboring school district. Her case became a national story, used by advocates and politicians to argue for school choice and against criminalizing parents. Gov. Kasich referred her case to the state's Parole Board; a decision is expected this summer.

Every morning across the country, Muslim students tell their parents they're scared to go to school -- because they'll be beaten and taunted for practicing Islam. Politicians flog fears of "the other" to drum up votes and campaign donations. Peaceful American citizens are branded as "terrorists" because of their skin color or their faith.

But on Friday, a student movement against blind Islamophobia scored a major victory -- UCLA's Islamic Studies program will re-open this fall after being frozen since 2007.

Last fall, students rallied, demonstrated, and attracted more than 5,400 signatures from the international Change.org community who called on the UCLA administration to bring back the program. These activists, led by student Ilona Gerbakher, argued that the fate of UCLA's program was a matter of national importance.  As we at Change.org blogged about - and publicized - their campaign, students kept the petition updated and finely-targeted, marshalling national support to show UCLA administrators that this was far larger than a campus issue.  

Texas Senator Mario Gallegos of Houston has changed his mind about the proposed law to allow concealed weapons on the state's college campuses.

""I'm really torn with this issue. I believe in the right to carry," Gallegos told the Associated Press. "But I also listen to my community colleges and universities. I've been bombarded in the last 24 hours."

Gallegos, along with two other Texas Senators who seem to have changed their mind about the bill, just delayed a vote on the measure from happening. But the fight isn't over. Senator Jeff Wentworth, who introduced SB 354, is determined to find other supporters and bring the measure up for a vote again early next week.

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.

Tens of thousands of us spoke up for equality, and we were heard: Students in Corpus Christi, Texas have won their fight to have a Gay-Straight Alliance -- for now!

Late last night, school board members in Corpus Christi, Texas reversed their decision to deny high school senior Bianca "Nikki" Peet's request to start a Gay-Straight Alliance at her school. Nikki Peet can now start a GSA and meet on campus. The long-term future of the club is still not certain, however, so our support is still needed.

The Flour Bluff Independent School District's board of trustees held a four-hour emergency meeting last night at the administration building in Corpus Christi to talk about the legal consequences of denying a gay-straight alliance on campus. Their discriminatory decision to block a GSA had been threatened with litigation by American Civil Liberties Union and the Anti- Defamation League, and had become a national phenomenon: more than 55,000 supporters signed a petition at Change.org on behalf of Peet and supporters held an all-day rally last Friday at Flour Bluff High.