Different high school, different lesbian student, same bigoted fucksticks:

When Veronica Rodriguez opened Wesson Attendance Center’s Yearbook on Friday, she didn’t find a trace of her lesbian daughter Ceara Sturgis after a long battle with school officials to include a photo of her daughter wearing a tuxedo in the school’s 2010 yearbook. “They didn’t even put her name in it,” Sturgis’ mother Veronica Rodriguez said. “I was so furious when she told me about it. Ceara started crying and I told her to suck it up. Is that not pathetic for them to do that? Yet again, they have crapped on her and made her feel alienated.”

Sturgis has been a student at Wesson Attendance Center—WTF with that name?—for 12 years. Sturgis is an honor student. She was told that her photo wouldn’t appear in the yearbook because, you know, God hates lesbians in tuxes. But that wasn’t enough for the bigots running Wesson: they removed all references to Sturgis. Her photo doesn’t appear in the yearbook, her name doesn’t appear on a list of graduating seniors, there’s no mention of the academic honors she racked up.

Like Constance McMillen—another lesbian student who had the nerve to stand up for herself and to be herself—Sturgis was retaliated against by the small-minded bigots who run her school.

Time for an accountability moment: the website for the Wesson Attendance Center is here. Ronald Greer is WAC’s principal and you can email him here. Oscar Hawkins is WAC’s high school principal and you can email him here. The school’s phone number is (601) 643-2221. The school’s fax number is (601) 643-2458.

Go get ’em.

108 replies on “Mississippi Goddamn: High School Erases Lesbian Student From Yearbook”

  1. #50, thank you so much for linking to Janelle Monae’s new video. I saw her Many Moons video on youtube last year and recently started wondering why I hadn’t heard anything more about her (because I thought she’d be HUGE). For the last few days I’ve been trying to remember anything about her or the song so I could google something and track it down again. I am enchanted.

    Seriously people, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHgbzNHVg…
    (after you write an email to the morons at the Wesson Attendance Center — those people make me sick)

  3. @ 17 – I ask this in all sincerity: How does one go about boycotting Mississippi? I’m pretty sure the only time I’ve had contact with the state’s economy was when I was driving from New Orleans to Georgia and had to stop for gas. It’s not exactly a high-export state.

  4. Thanks For The Numbers. Now I can Call and Say “Good Job! Stick to Your Guns! Don’t Back Down to Your Beliefs”!!!!

  5. @ 14, 16, 29 – A gentle suggestion, guys. Slog started hiding unregistered comments so that you don’t have to look at them. We all know Alleged is a blithering idiot. Don’t go out of your way to feed the trolls.

    I’d comment on the substance of the story itself, but everyone seems to have it covered. This is outrageous, and it’s up to us to make sure that erasing a student from the yearbook is a far, far bigger distraction than just letting her be ever could have been.

  6. Thanks For the Numbers!!! Now I Can Call & Say “Good Job!! Way to Go! Stick to Your Guns and Dont Back Down”!!!!!!!

  8. Yikes, sorry for the comment spam, but this is worth noting. The school district really needs to fire their lawyers. Any lawyer stupid enough to think you can rely on “precedent” set by a case that settled – and therefore resulted in no legal holding – needs to be tossed out.

    Also, “arbitrary and capricious” is a standard of review used to review a lower court’s holding on appeal. It’s also a term of art that generally refers to administrative regulations. I suppose, by its literal meaning, it could be stretched to encompass something like a school photo policy, but again, any lawyer who doesn’t realize that “arbitrary and capricious” is a term of art? Needs to be fired.

  9. I think that the whole of Mississippi, my home state by the way, is and still remains one of the most oppressive places to live BECAUSE of all the bigotry. I gre up gay in southern Mississippi in the late 70’s and early 80’s and it was certainly no walk in the park by any means. Yet, double standards run rampant, it seems anywhere you go. In most places it easier to accept a lesbian girl in a tux than a gay guy in a dress, or two chicks gettin it on butlet it be two guys and everyone wants to fuss, fight, and gay bash about it. I was neither “out” nor “closeted” growing up there in Mississippi. Yet, how ironic it was that some of the very people who taunted me and branded me the school fag were the same people I ran into in the gay bars after high school. It amazes me how the very places who are so damn conservative are often the very places who have the most outrageous double standards and closet cases to the max!! Even where I live in a small town in north Texas, the same holds true. A local lake/park nearby was once a very “cruisey” place where gay guys met to play in the woods (until local law enforcement got wind of it and set up a sting, that is). They busted nearly 40+ guys, some of whom were doing NOTHING but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Strangely still were prominent members of the community such a several local lawyers, doctors, and god forbid even one of the local judges, but also the local first baptist church decon who at age 70, was so ruined by the incident for his little dirty “secret” to be found out in the WAY that it was, that he put a gun to his head!! All one has to do is look on the men for men listings on ones local craigslist page and do a little investigating and “meeting” on one’s own to find out just exactly WHO in your neighborhood, IS SILENTLY AND “DISCREETLY” QUEER AS A THREE DOLLAR BILL!! Yet, it is those very people who are the ones who shout “morals”, “religious doctrines” and “oh we must protect the children from such perversion.” GET REAL PEOPLE!! KIDS TODAY ARE NOT MUCH DIFFERENT THAN WE OF THE BABY BOOM GENERATION. THE VERY THINGS YOU TRY TO TELL THEM “NOT” TO DO, ARE OFTEN THE VERY THINGS THEY PURSUE WITH THEIR RAGING HORMONES!!! GUYS WILL EXPERIMENT WITH GUYS AND GIRLS WILL EXPERIMENT WITH THE GAY SIDE AS WELL. THIS ALSO INCLUDES DRINKING, DOING DRUGS, AND PARTYING. ADMIT IT!! WE ALL DID IT AT THAT AGE. BUT, not all of us turned out totally gay any more than some turned out totally straight either. Androgyny is here to stay wether the religious bigots like it or not yet it is often the religious bible thumpin idiots who are the BIGGEST closet cases are are always lookin to be blown by another guy. I know because I see it all the time in my locale and have experienced it equally as much in a place like Mississippi. The more conservative a locale, the more closet cases there will be. Its just a fact of life. People, gays and lesbians included, confuse being and living “out” with self-acceptance and their efforts of being “out” is, by most, considered “flaunting it.” This is where even the gay people of the world are so short sighted and “invite” trouble. I say this because even in my own conservative community, my partnr of quite a few years and I are members of a local very conservative parish. We are well respected as a couple as it does not take a rocket scientist to figure it out. BUT, WE DO NOT FALUNT THE FACT THAT WE ARE A COUPLE. This is where those unfortunate young ladies in a backwoods Mississippi school are making their biggest mistake, I think. I sympathsize with them exremely. However, I have learned that to get along in the world and to truly achieve harmony, well, sometimes you simply just have to learn to “play the part”, as it were. If you live in a conservative area and behave in a way contrary to that conservatism, then you are inviting trouble, regardless of how much you like to believe that its about “gay pride”, “self-acceptance”, etc. etc. AD NAUSEAM!!! Yeah, sure, I’d love to embrace my partner in public like straight people get away with doing but there is a big difference between being embracingly endearing and out right makin out in public which I am totally opposed to, both gay and straight. I am, have always been and always will be a Liberal. We HAVE come a long way in terms of gay rights, ’tis true. However, it remains obvious that people in Mississippi haven’t gotten ANYWHERE in terms of acceptance of people different than themselves. Since many of the kids nowadays DON’T REALLY CARE about sexual orientation, it seems to me that the only ones making an issure of those lesbian girls are more the administration than the student body but to make EVERYONE have to suffer by cancelling the prom or completely erasing that girl from the year book is absolutely deplorable. I grew up gay there in Mississippi and most of my classmates didn’t really care. I never made an issue of being “out” because I was struggling with coming to terms with my own identity then anyway and even had a girlfriend AND attended prom. Despite it all, deep down inside I knew I was gay but later on in life came to terms with the fact that I like BOTH, that I AM POLYAMOROUS and even my partner now is also and neither of us give a damn what people “think”. It is ALL a matter of perspectives and people (especially those bigots in Mississippi, my own idiotic family included), really NEED to get things into proper perspective because in the end, no matter how you slice it, WE’RE HERE, WE’RE QUEER, GET USED TO IT!!!!!!!!!!

  10. @55
    I looked up “blithering idiot”.
    It said it is ‘someone who thinks all unregistered posts are by the same person’.
    It had your picture as an illistration.

    (you seem a little obsessed with our troll-
    still buttsore over something?)

  11. @ 58 – Sorry, need to post a correction. I did a bit of research, and it turns out the federal district court DID rule in favor of the school district in Youngblood; the case settled while it was on wait for appeal. That still makes it a pretty lousy case to rely on, though I will admit to passing judgment far too quickly in dismissing the school board’s lawyers as criminally idiotic. That being said, a case that settles out of court in the plaintiff’s favor is not likely to carry much weight as defendant-friendly precedent. Besides, a district court case in Florida is not going to have precedental value in Mississippi (only “persuasive authority”).

  12. @55
    And the new Unregistered mode is an aid to all the brilliant hipsters who bitch and whine about unregistered comments but weren’t clever enough to click the ‘off’ button themself.

    Soon the Slog will be introducing a new “let Slog wipe your ass for you since you don’t seem to be able to master that either…” feature. Stay tuned!

  13. I wrote the following letter:

    Dear Donald Greer and Oscar Hawkins,

    I read a story from the Jackson Free Press about a student named Ceara Sturgis in her senior year of high school at Wesson Attendance Center. I read that her picture was going to be deleted from her yearbook, and I understand that this is because of the student’s wish to wear a tuxedo instead of a dress. I understand from Superintendent Ricky Clopton that your decision to delete her picture is based upon “sound educational policy”, even though students who have been busted for drugs and who have dropped out from school had their pictures included in the same yearbook, and even though Ceara had wonderful grades compared to the rest of her classmates. When the yearbook did come out, Ceara Sturgis’ name was completely removed, and none of her accolades for her academic performances were mentioned – it was as if Ceara had never existed at Wesson Attendance Center despite her twelve years there. When considering a sound educational policy, it seems perplexing that clothing attire would take such an egregious precedence compared to serious matters such as academic performance, drug use and dropping out of school. However, I also understand that Ceara Sturgis is a lesbian, and I am aware of the pervasive and crippling homophobia in the state of Mississippi that would drive institutions such as high schools to discriminate against those whose sexual orientations are different, despite educational policy. If I could be frank, it seems like a walk over a small crack on the sidewalk as opposed to a leap of faith to think that Wesson Attendance Center removed Ceara Sturgis completely from her yearbook primarily because she is a lesbian, in the name of a sound educational policy that appears to defy drug usage and schoold drop-outs and scof at individual academic excellence. If I were Ceara Sturgis, I would feel thankful to be free from association with a school that appears to be enslaved by the repugnance and cowardice of bigotry, but I would also hope that the school finds a way to free itself from this bigotry, because the world is a beautiful place when everyone is free together, as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed decades ago. Donald Greer and Oscar Hawkins, we will do what we can to help free both of you and everyone else at Wesson Attendance Center, for I can’t wait for the day when all of us are free at last.

    Sincerely,
    Sean Chapin

  14. @ 61 – Further clarification (sorry, I swear I’m done after this one, really). Because, as I noted, Youngblood took place in Florida (11th Circuit) and this is in Mississippi (5th Circuit) – in addition to the fact that the case ultimately settled out of court in the plaintiff’s favor – for the district’s lawyers to assert that Youngblood is “legal precedent” is still blatantly wrong. It is possible (in fact, probable) that language was simply chosen for the press release, but if the district’s lawyers led the school district to believe that Youngblood is actual legal precedent, then they need some new lawyers.

  16. So disheartening. These actions are against everything I believe a “school” to be. Needless to say, an email was sent to the principals. Thanks for following this injustice & bringing it to our attention, Dan.

  17. WhaWhaWha … who gives a crap, so she wasnt in the year book, I wouldn’t want a guy who fiddled with a sheep pictured in one either.

  18. My two cents to the ignorant fucksticks:
    Dear Mr. Ronald Greer and Mr. Oscar Hawkins,

    Please, please, tell me this isn’t true. Please tell me you didn’t obliterate all reference to a student – an honor student who has attended the schools in your district for her entire twelve year education – from her senior yearbook because she tried to wear a tux in her senior class photo.

    I hope you can tell me this isn’t true, Mr. Greer and Mr. Hawkins, because if it is true then you have just done yourselves, your school,your state and the students you’re supposed to be educating a grave and unforgivable disservice. You’ve demonstrated to the country once again that Mississippi is clinging to its roots of bigotry and intolerance, and you’ve demonstrated clearly to your student body that being true to yourself is a bad thing and that it’s okay to discriminate against someone because their view of the world doesn’t match up to yours.

    I pity those students, gentlemen, for when they graduate this June and go out into the world, they will be at a disadvantage. You have not prepared them to go out into the world and be productive members of society, as is your duty. No, you have taught them that hatred and bigotry are acceptable, and that will certainly make it difficult for them to get along well in the world outside Wesson Attendance Center. For the rest of the world is waking up to the idea that people aren’t cookies cut from the same mold, and that every human being – regardless of race, color, creed, ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender identity or sexuality – deserves dignity and respect.

    Shame on you, gentlemen. Shame.

    Sincerely,
    Hannah

  19. I’m just going to say that they are stupid fucktards and that it’s a very Stalin-ish of them to try and erase her from their exhaulted (not!) Wesson Attendance Center history.

    They will be getting a very irate email from me and I hope that one day we won’t have to deal with stupid BS like this anymore.

  20. So I called the school. They told me to look at the yearbook. I’d love to. Please post pictures of the page in question. Prove me wrong. Jerks.

  22. Here’s what I wrote.

    Mr. Greer and Mr. Hawkins,

    I am curious to know how you justify to yourselves the unkindness you have perpetrated against a smart, well-behaved teenage girl. Erasing all traces of Miss Sturgis from your school’s yearbook was extraordinarily childish, cruel, and altogether despicable. Whether you understand her or not, she is a child in your school’s care, an honor student who has worked earnestly for twelve years, and you have a responsibility to treat her fairly. She exists.

    If you have any decency, you will reprint that yearbook and issue a public apology.

  23. I was made an unperson in my yearbook my junior and senior years and my photos were sent down the memory hole as well (even in the actual class pictures).

    I wasn’t gay though, just punk.

  27. My letter:

    Dear Mr. Greer,

    Having taught in a secondary school for over twenty years, I simply cannot believe that the faculty who oversee the yearbook could either countenance or endorse a decision to eliminate all pictures and references to Ceara Sturgis, unless the felt they had both sanction and approval. I suspect that they would never arrive at such a decision without first consulting with their principal.

    I therefore am forced to the conclusion that you are culpable, and ultimately responsible, for the decision to “erase” Ceara Sturgis from the yearbook.

    A yearbook should represent the entire student body—whether or not individual students have the favor of the faculty and administration. A yearbook is, in essence, an historical document. You and your staff have attempted to rewrite history, making it conform to your own arbitrary and capricious criteria, by erasing an intelligent, hardworking young woman of whose sexuality you happen to disapprove.

    Fortunately for all of us, history means progress. I believe that the childish and vindictive actions of you and your staff demonstrate that you are now, and will remain, on the wrong side of history.

    I was born and raised in the South, and have lived in it for fifty years. For three years, though, I attended graduate school in New York City. During those three years, I frequently had to defend my home, arguing that the South was unfairly stereotyped as being peopled by hateful bigots. Unfortunately for me, Mr. Greer, you have given the lie to my arguments, and have further cemented the image of the South as hostile and hateful.

  28. @67
    “I wouldn’t want a guy who fiddled with a sheep pictured in one either”

    Is that why you weren’t in YOUR yearbook?

  29. I emailed both principals.

    I also called the school, but apparently they’re involved in state testing until Friday, on which day I’ll call back to speak with either of the principals directly. You should call, too.

  30. Has anyone seen the yearbook? I just got off the phone with the school administrator who was quick to correct me and said that Ceara IS in the yearbook?? She then told me that the yearbook hasn’t even been available to anyone yet? So, what the fuck is going on? Are they lying? Will someone please clear this up, so I don’t look like a retarded and unprepared activist??

  32. thanks Janelle for posting this link!
    my email reads as follows:

    Dear Mr. Hawkins,

    My favorite singer Janelle Monåe wears a tuxedo and that doesn’t keep her from being in magazines or on TV or from anything! If anything, it empowers her. I would hate to wake up to a world is which freedom of expression does not hold truth. We are not all robots! Some of us DO indeed think out of the box. I think the Wesson Attendance Center too. Don’t ruin someone’s life. What if it was you?

    Most sincerely,

    E.T.

  33. @ 80, go back to the linked article where the mom says she had a yearbook. I’d say that the school official lied to you.

  35. This is ridiculous.

    There was a girl in my high school who killed two people while drinking and driving and mutilated the two others in the car with her. She still openly drank in public even after that. She still got to graduate with us and be in the yearbook and, in general, be a normal high schooler. The only thing they wouldn’t let her to is walk the aisle at graduation and on weekends she had to spend in a juvenile center.

    Why does a girl who essentially murdered two people and destroyed the lives of two other people get better treatment than a girl who happens to likes other girls. This is messed up.

  36. #83 The argument she made is that they haven’t even been available to faculty. I read the article, but unfortunately, before I go off half-cocked I’d sure like to have some facts to back it up? The word of a parent whose child has been treated like shit by the school district sure gets my blood up, but it still doesn’t qualify as a fact. Can anyone provide evidence that is is, in “fact” true?? I mean, Yearbooks are copyrighted material and can’t be on the internet without the schools written permission, so how can we get some evidence. I would certainly like to write a harshly worded missive to the school’s principal, it’s staff and the school board…but not if I’m wrong. I’m sure that if it were true, the school wouldn’t need to lie about it or they would provide staff with a talking point to handle irate callers and the press? So?? Anyone? It’s an emotional issue, but emotions can cloud judgment and shouldn’t take the place of truth. Have any other students come forward on this issue? I haven’t been able to find more information.

  40. Just when you think it can’t get any crazier…. Congratulations Mississippi, you’ve gobsmacked me again!

    Please. As so many people have posted (much more eloquently) before me, it’s a tux. She was wearing clothes, yes? And if the picture required formal wear, a tux surely counts, right?

    So what’s the big deal?

    Mr. Greer and Mr. Hawkins, I respectfully ask that you Google “women’s tuxedo”. It’s a style trend y’know. Been around for quite a while.

    Just so you know.

  43. What really surprises me in both this issue and Constance’s issue, is that ANYONE thinks women wearing tuxedos is a new scary “lesbian” thing. Women in the 70s were doing this. I almost did for my own prom 10+ years ago (and I’m not a lesbian, I just thought it looked nice and was looking less problematic than trying to find a dress that fit). Betty and Veronica did it in a comic I read when I was a kid! Why is it so threatening NOW all of a sudden for a girl to want to wear a nice, tailored tux to the prom? Is it abruptly SO impossible to wrap heads around the concept of a girl who’s not all that into skirts?

  46. I want to know if this is about gender expression more than sexual orientation. I believe they told her that she must wear a dress and she refused and was thereby excluded. If she wore a dress, she would have been included, despite her sexual orientation. So, why does the story focus on her sexual orientation when it is actually her gender expression that is the issue?

  48. I AM IN OUTRAGE! HOW DARE WESSON ATTENDANCE CENTER NOT INCLUDE STUDENT Ceara Sturgis IN THEIR YEARBOOK BECAUSE OF SEXUAL PREFERENCE! I AM A PRODUCT OF A LESBIAN MOTHER AND IT IS BECAUSE OF PLACES LIKE WESSON AND DISCRIMINATORY ACTIONS THAT PEOPLE ARE AFRAID AND CONFUSED ABOUT THEY’RE SEXUALITY! IF PEOPLE THINK IT IS A CHOICE TO BE HOMOSEXUAL THEY ARE WRONG! DO PEOPLE CHOOSE TO BE STRAIGHT? OR LACK THERE OF? NO, I THINK NOT THEY DID NOT CHOOSE IT EITHER THEY WERE BORN LIKE THAT JUST LIKE HETEROSEXUALS ARE BORN LIKE THAT!
    IT IS SAD TO SAY THAT SUCH HATE IS STILL ALIVE IN THIS WORLD AND WESSON ATTENDANCE CENTER IS JUST CONTRIBUTING TO IT! WESSON IS NO EDUCATOR TO ME AND ARE ONLY THE PROBLEM!

  49. Other people have probably mentioned this already, but lots of female celebrities have worn tuxedoes and America loved them for it! Most notably of course is the famous, gorgeous picture of Marlene Dietrich rocking a tuxedo. The difference here, I’m guessing, is intent: This student was (potentially) making a statement about her sexuality—as opposed to simply looking sexy (to men) in a tuxedo—and the school can’t handle that. Bigots need to get their heads out of their asses and look at the bigger picture.

  50. Personally, I don’t see the connection between Marlene Dietrich being able to wear a tuxedo and this particular student. They are different people living in very different times and surrounded by different people with extremely different ideas about what’s right for a teenager to wear in her yearbook. She refused to wear gender-normative uniform and she decided that wearing the gender-normative clothing for boys was the best choice for her. Her clothing choice is the issue, not whether her sexuality is acceptable.

    Also Constance McMillan chose to wear a tuxedo because her school refused to let a trans student complete one day of school because his clothing choices were too controversial. Her choice of the tuxedo was made to protest the restrictive policies regarding gender expression.

    Both schools require students to be gender-normative and these two young adults refused to play along. They may both be lesbians, but the issue is about gender, not sexuality.

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