In Good Old Texas School Superintendent Wants To Make LGTB Students Invisibl
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Meet Dr. Julie Carbajal, the Superintendent of Flour Bluff Independent School District in Corpus Christi, Texas. This past week, Dr. Carbajal made national attention for all the wrong reasons. Because instead of allowing her students to form a safe space to come together and talk about bullying and harassment, Dr. Carbajal decided to ban all extra-curricular activities in order to keep LGBT students at Flour Bluff High School invisible.At issue, as we've covered on Change.org a few times this past week, is the attempt made by students at Flour Bluff High School to form a gay-straight alliance (GSA), a group where students of all sexual orientations and gender identities can come together to discuss things like safety, harassment, and bullying. The group had all the right things in place in order to become a student organization -- student interest, faculty available to sponsor it. But instead of getting the go-ahead the start the group -- which students are legally entitled to have under the federal Equal Access Act -- Dr. Carbajal and Flour Bluff High School's Principal, James Crenshaw, stepped in to ban the group.
Apparently in Corpus Christi, Texas, civil rights and a little basic human decency end the second a student walks through the front doors of high school.
Yesterday, local news station KIII-TV covered this story, and spoke to a number of students at Flour Bluff High School who said that not only is a GSA necessary, but that there's absolutely no harm in allowing people a space to talk about bullying and harassment.
One of the students KIII-TV spoke to was Samantha Johnson. Her statement sums up exactly what the proposed GSA was all about: promoting safety and tolerance.
"I think we should have a club," Johnson said. "If there's a safe environment for everyone to talk about things, maybe we won't have so many issues about gays."
Another student at a nearby high school, Andrew Longoria, said that he thinks educators are missing the point of what a GSA offers students.
"I think they're missing the big picture that this is a support group," Longoria said.
Perhaps it's time for administrators at Flour Bluff Independent School District to actually start listening to their students. Banning all clubs just so that LGBT students have no place to meet? Really? That's considered being an effective educator?
So far more than 2,500 people have emailed Dr. Carbajal and Flour Bluff administrators, letting them know that their decision to go nuclear and ban all clubs just to punish LGBT students is both offensive and an abdication of the duties of good educators.
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