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A gay first-year student at Jacksonville State University in Alabama claims that he was rejected by the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity because of rumors about his sexual orientation. On one level, this is an unsurprising story. But on another, as Pam Spaulding notes, it’s very interesting indeed.
Steele Jackson says Pi Kappa Phi blackballed him when rumors that he was gay began to circulate, but chapter president Chris Stokes denies it, saying the frat doesn’t “discriminate based on … any kind of orientation.” In that, Stokes is following the mandates of the fraternity’s national body, which bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
So Jackson, a gay student at an Alabama state college, was willing to say so publicly. The president of the local chapter of the fraternity he pledged denied explicitly that the frat discriminates against gay pledges. And they both made their statements in an article in their campus newspaper.
As Spaulding says, “this particular story has a lot to offer in terms of observations about life in Red State America and the changes that are under way.”
Quick link: US News & World Report has a long article out on high schools that have been established to serve lesbian and gay student populations, particularly students who have been victims of bullying in school.
“Simpson said the movement was sparked by conversations among several members of Princeton’s performing groups.”
The nine members of the American River College student government who voted to endorse California’s anti- same-sex marriage Proposition 8 have survived the recall vote that attempted to remove them from office.
The vote in the recall election was nearly seven times as high as the vote that brought the student government to office — 3,531 votes, as opposed to about five hundred — but still amounted to only nine percent of the ARC student body. Each of the student government members received about 53-54% of the vote in the recall.
With the presidential election shaping up as an Obama blowout in California this year, the biggest issue on the November ballot there is Proposition 8, a measure that would overturn the state court’s recent ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.
Polls show California voters equally divided on Prop 8, and the campaign is dividing the students at American River College (ARC), a Sacramento-area community college, as well.
On September 30, the ARC student government voted 8-3 to endorse Proposition 8, and anti-8 students immediately set to work gathering signatures for a recall election to remove the pro-8 representatives from office. The recall election was held earlier this week, and votes are still being counted.
The recall highlights low voter turnout in student government elections. According to one source, only 300 students voted in the last election at ARC, a college of over 37,000 students.
Five of the representatives facing recall are Christian students from the former Soviet Union, and controversy has arisen over dual-language flyers distributed during the recall effort on behalf of those students.
One blogger had the Russian text of a flyer translated, and found that where the English-language side of the handout asked “Does responding to Student requests by passing a resolution endorsing Prop 8 (Marriage Protection Amendment) make them ‘incompetent’ or unqualified for Office?”, the Russian-language side bore this message:
Stop homosexuals! They want to silence the voices of the believers and the Slavs in our college and they want to take the light from everyone who supports marriages!
studentactivism.net 
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