So, this has been stirring in the news, but I hate publicity stunts, so I was ignoring it. The issue concerns a student who presumably wanted to start a high-school “secular club.” Were that all, we’d just say, “Big whup.”
But the ACLU and the Freedom from Religion Foundation threatened to sue.
The Mountaineer published an excerpt from a 56-page report prepared by Haywood County Schools’ attorney Pat Smathers and sent to representatives of both organizations:
“It is my opinion your allegations … are without merit and baseless,” Smathers wrote, stating he thought they arose from a “manufactured controversy” caused by a parent’s influence on his children and a desire for publicity and potential financial gain.
In short, the school claims the organization was not brought to fruition for failure to complete the requirements in its policy for setting up a club. Additional concerns were raised because it appeared the club was used to rake personal gain for the student organizer. A web site was set up to raise funds for legal defense for the club, but it changed its purpose to raising funds to pay for the clubber’s summer camp. Then, both the student who first tried to launch the club, and his sibling who took over after he dropped out, received $1000 activist scholarships from the FFRF.
On the flipside, the taker-overer sibling:
said she had been receiving dirty looks and harassing messages online and was even worried she would be beaten up.
Reportedly, the victim could only provide school administrators with evidence for one instance of “potential bullying,” and that was dismissed as trivial.
And that’s not the half of it.
