prom queen

Constance McMillen Was Tricked Into Attending a Faux Prom. Who The Hell Are These People?

So, it’s true: Mississippi’s high school senior Constance McMillen was tricked into attending a faux prom while all the cool kids went to the real prom. She dropped in fashionably late, about 90 minutes after it started, and stayed for about a half hour. Ugh. It’s all a disgusting showing of human character, where students, parents, and the high school’s administrators appear to have colluded on an exercise in discrimination. These people danced the night away knowing they shunned a classmate because, in one small respect, she is different. In the end, the high school got what they wanted: A gay-free prom. Is everyone proud of themselves?

Some lingering thoughts.

Were school administrators and faculty aware of the other prom? McMillen’s principal and several high school teachers chaperoned the prom Constance went to, which means either they were in on the ruse (against a student! Jesus) and lent a free evening so other students could party gay-free, or were also duped by parents and thought they would be hosted a school-wide prom.

Who was behind each prom? Constance attended Itawamba Agricultural High School’s official senior prom at the Fulton Country Club, which was announced by a school attorney, but it’s unclear whether the school district was actually sponsoring it. So who put on the other event in Evergreen? Parents, evidently. We want names, and it appears the ACLU does too.

McMillen really has a deficit of trustworthy friends at school. Besides her girlfriend and the smattering of fellow students (read: all five of them, who are now dubbed outcasts, if they weren’t before), nobody else showed up at the prom. Which means everybody else knew it was a fake one, and they went to the real one. Which also means nobody has the decency to tell McMillen about the stunt — and all their Facebook profiles are locked down, since this type of thing rarely escapes Internet gossip among students. McMillen says she knew about the other prom, but after asking a classmate about it, the student told McMillen “the prom is at the country club.” So she didn’t go to the other one.

What would’ve happened if she went to the “real” prom? No, really. Would they have barred she and her girlfriend from entering?

Will there be legal repercussions? U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson already ruled the school violated Constance’s rights by banning her from its prom. But now that she was, technically, invited to the school‘s prom, are administrators in the clear? Even if they knew their own school prom would be a dud?

How can these kids, faculty, and parents face Constance after Friday night’s events? These people are deplorable, and anyone who acted with knowledge of the dual proms — and that they existed to exclude Constance — acted with malice. This is a shameful display of behavior from a local community.

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