吃瓜大本营

When students asked school officials to let them start a gay-straight alliance club in 2005 to combat rampant anti-gay harassment and bullying at at White County High School in Cleveland, Georgia, they were met with resistance and stalling tactics for several months. School administrators reluctantly agreed to let the club form late in the school year after the ACLU of Georgia stepped in and negotiated on the students鈥� behalf. The students named the gay-straight alliance PRIDE (鈥淧eers Rising in Diverse Education鈥�) and began meeting.

A few days later, school officials announced plans to ban all non-curricular student groups staring with the next academic year. PRIDE hasn鈥檛 been permitted to meet on campus in the 2005-2006 school year, but several other clubs 鈥� including 鈥淪hooting Club鈥� and a school dance team 鈥� continue meeting at WCHS even though they don鈥檛 participate in activities relevant to the curriculum, academic credit is not provided for participation in them, and participation in them isn鈥檛 required for any course.

The ACLU鈥檚 Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project and the ACLU of Georgia filed a lawsuit in federal court against school officials for illegally banning the GSA and succeed in securing a preliminary injunction ordering the school to allow the GSA and all other school clubs to meet.

Status: Victory! The ACLU reached a settlement agreement with school officials in White County. The terms of the settlement agreement include enacting an anti-harassment policy to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students from bullying. The school has also agreed to provide their faculty with annual training sessions on how to deal with and prevent anti-gay harassment.

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