hatman: HatMan, my alter ego and face on the 'net (Default)
([personal profile] hatman Jun. 12th, 2011 02:16 am)
You've probably heard of this by now. It's been all over Twitter and my flist. But just in case you haven't:

A 16 year old cheerleader in Texas was raped by the team's star player. The school told her to keep it quiet, advised her to avoid the cafeteria and homecoming, and kept the player on the team. When she refused to directly cheer her rapist to "put it in" (though she did still cheer other players and the team as a whole), she was kicked off the squad and called a "slut."

She took the case to court... and lost. The court decided that, in her role as a cheerleader, she was effectively the voice of the school, and therefore bound to promote its interests. Now, on top of everything, she's been ordered to pay $45,000 to reimburse the school for their legal fees.

You can read a fuller account at Ms Magazine.

HelpTheCheerleader.com is collecting money for her. Whatever you can afford to chip in. There's a sketch artist who donated his services, but he was quickly backlogged with ~150 requests and forced to stop taking new orders for a while.

In other news, you may recall that I posted about a school in Detroit. One dedicated to helping teenage mothers (during and after pregnancy). With a remarkable success rate. Yet the city's "emergency financial manager," granted unilateral authority by the governor, is going to close it down unless they could find someone willing to support it as a charter school. For a while, it looked like they would, but somehow or other that fell through. Now the school is slated to close this coming week. There's more coverage here, including video and links.

The emergency manager in question can be contacted at:

Roy S. Roberts
Emergency Manager
14th Floor, Fisher Building
3011 West Grand Blvd.
Detroit, MI 48202
United States Phone: (313) 870-3772
Fax: (313) 870-3726

There's also a protest in the works.

I'm not sure what else can be done, especially from out of state, but spreading the word is a start.

From: [identity profile] annabtg.livejournal.com


I heard about that cheerleader, and it's unacceptable. Same as the part about that school for young mothers. Those people should be ashamed.
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