A lesbian high school student from Carroll High School is upset that she will be missing her senior prom on April 24 because the school will not let her wear a tuxedo to the big event.
Claudetteia Love will be representing Carroll High School at the annual Scholars' Banquet, an event for the top students in Ouachita Parish, the News Star reported. After graduation, she will go to Jackson State University on a full academic scholarship.
But despite Love's achievements in honour of the school, Carroll High School is not willing to make special exceptions to its dress code for the prom.
According to Love's mother Geraldine Jackson, her daughter said: "They're using me. They put me in all these honours and advanced placement classes so I can take all of these tests and get good grades and better the school, but when it's time for me to celebrate the fact that I've accomplished what I need to accomplish and I'm about to graduate, they don't want to let me do it, the way I want to."
Love's mother talked to Principal Patrick Taylor about it, but the school will not bend its rules. "He said that the faculty that is working the prom told him they weren't going to work the prom if girls were going to wear tuxes," she said. "That's his exact words. 'Girls wear dresses and boys wear tuxes, and that's the way it is.'"
In his defense, Taylor said that he has nothing against any student and they are just adhering to the dress code. But Jackson insists that the principal is "taking his values and throwing them on my daughter because of what her preference is."
Monroe City School Board President Rodney McFarland has said action will be taken to ensure that the teen gets to go to her prom.
"As school board president, I don't agree with Carroll banning her from her prom just because of what she wants to wear - that's discrimination," he said. "As far as I know there is no Monroe City School Board policy saying what someone has to wear to attend the prom. You can't just go making up policies."
