This story is great.
A West Virginia high school student is filing an injunction against her principal, who she claims is threatening to punish her for speaking out against a factually inaccurate abstinence assembly at her school. Katelyn Campbell, who is the student body vice president at George Washington High School, alleges her principal threatened to call the college where she’s been accepted to report that she has “bad character.”
[…]
But it didn’t end with a simple difference of opinion among Campbell and her principal. The high school senior alleges that Aulenbacher threatened to call Wellesley College, where Campbell has been accepted to study in the fall, after she spoke to the press about her objections to the assembly. According to Campbell, her principal said, “How would you feel if I called your college and told them what bad character you have and what a backstabber you are?” Campbell alleges that Aulenbacher continued to berate her in his office, eventually driving her to tears. “He threatened me and my future in order to put forth his own personal agenda and make teachers and students feel they cant speak up because of fear of retaliation,” she said of the incident.
Despite being threatened, Campbell is not backing down. She hopes that filing this injunction will protect her freedom of speech to continue advocating for comprehensive sexual health resources for West Virginia’s youth. “West Virginia has the ninth highest pregnancy rate in the U.S.,” Campbell told the Gazette. “I should be able to be informed in my school what birth control is and how I can get it. With the policy at GW, under George Aulenbacher, information about birth control and sex education has been suppressed. Our nurse wasn’t allowed to talk about where you can get birth control for free in the city of Charleston.”
So, first and foremost, the kids are OK. Despite adults lying to them, they know what’s up. That’s true of sex. It’s true of drugs. It’s true of plenty of life. Lying to people you’re trying to educate can’t work out well.
But here, I want to say that even if you accept the principal’s and the assembly speaker’s notion that abstinence only education will lead to people waiting until marriage to have sex, and you think that’s a good thing that it’s not a good thing to teach.
Imagine someone who attended that assembly and waited until they were married to have sex because of it. Wouldn’t they still want to know how effective birth control was for real? If their partner had had sex before they married our hypothetical student and had got a disease, wouldn’t they want to know what was effective at preventing getting it? I mean this seems pretty basic. If you keep that sort of info from them until they’re married, it doesn’t just magically become available on their wedding night.
Man, I wish more self-important school principals would threaten to tell colleges their students have “bad character,” because my lawyer friends need the work! Last I heard that’s libel. I hope this school district has a big insurance policy.
This story has a giant Fuck You coda to the Principal too who is a giant ingnoramus.
“Why…why…if you question my abstinence teachings I’ll claim you’re a slut. And I’ll be sure to tell that Women’s Liberal Arts college what a slattern you are young lady!”
Abstinence, birth control, abortion – whatever works!
It’s silly to think that abstinence alone is going to work.
I imagine the assembly speaker Pam Stenzel gets this a lot.
I think that if the principal carried out the threat, that the good people at Wellesley (Hillary’s alma mater) would laugh in his face.
That kind of school (liberal, highly competitive, focused on high-quality students) would dearly love an outspoken, articulate, self-starting firecracker like Ms. Campbell.
I hope he makes that call.
You know, I read this and smiled.
Our nation and the world ARE going to get better because despite all the obstacles presented to Ms. Campbell in the gawd-forsaken backassward state of West Virginia, this smart assertive young lady is on her way to Wellesley where she’ll be educated, nurtured and developed into an outstanding leader in whatever field she pursues.
Dog Bless America!
Wellesley tweeted that they are excited to welcome her in the fall, and linked to the story in the Charleston Gazette. That principal didn’t have a clue what he was dealing with.
@7 Awww. Too bad. I was hoping one of my brother lawyers would make a nice contingency fee off this. Maybe next time.
@8
Think of the greater good, Rog.
Rush Limbaugh calls her a slut, and the death threats start (if they haven’t already)…3…2….1…
Looks like the guys that did the Boston bombing were foreigners, just like I predicted on a previous thread. So, all you people that said it was the work of right-wing wackos or left-wing loons, you are wrong, wrong, wrong!
Who is going to sue whom in this Boston tragedy? Is the city on the hook, or is it the sponsors of the marathon? The lawyers are sharpening their legal axes, I’m sure!
If the goal is no unwanted children (which I interpret to mean no out-of-wedlock births) then I totally support abstinence, birth control and abortion as a means of achieving the goal. They are all good tools to accomplish the task. Let’s use all three!
@13 The issue with such “education” isn’t that abstinence is a bad thing – it’s that any number of studies have shown that it’s counter-productive as the only option given, especially to teens. Because most of them won’t wait, and then you have a worse situation than before, where they’re not just young (and often poor) but also woefully ignorant of birth control options, how STIs are spread, and so on. You wind up with more abortions, and a public health nightmare around STIs. It should be presented as an option, but not the only one possible or acceptable.
On that note, plenty of wanted babies are born “out of wedlock,” and plenty of unwanted babies are born to – and plenty of abortions pursued by – married couples. Just sayin’.
Th
Hidden in the debate over abstinence and birth control is the issue of First Amendment rights. Courts have a pretty mixed record of protecting high-school students with respect to those rights. It takes a pretty courageous student to stand up in the face of a principal and assert their rights.
Meanwhile, Facebook is awash in allegations that Pres. Obama is planning on “cancelling” the First Amendment by executive order, and their are enough kooks out there who believe it. These are the same ones who have been claiming that Pres. Obama orchastrated the Boston bombings as an excuse to take away 2nd Amendment gun rights.
In Tennessee, there is some controversey over the “AgGag” bill. Seems there was a scandal over the revered Tennessee Walking horses, and one trainer was charged with intentionally “soring” the horses to get better performance and scores in competitions. The Horse community (and local press) was all over this issue, until it turned into a bill which required any news media coming into possession of possible evidence of animal abuse give it to the authorties within 48 hours. Now the entire bill may be defeated due to over-reaching.
And today, in Boston the Police have asked for a “voluntary embargo” on communications taken from police scanners, observations of police movement and deployments, etc. “Communications” includes telephone calls, tweets, e-mails, facebook posts, etc. Which under the circumstances is fine, I guess. But there have been some comments from the authorities that anyone who violates the “vountargy embargo” might be charged with “impeding an investigation”.
I just with those who were so protective of their 2nd Amendment rights were as concerned about the rest of the Constitution as well, including ALL of the amendments.
But the entire ‘abstinence only’ birth control education system isn’t about what would be best for society and the students, it’s about slut-shaming young women who might be sexually active before marriage and “sex is icky and against god’s plan for you”.
People who teach it couldn’t care any less whether young people need help after they are married.