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Joe Quigley - Call to action


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The following is an email from Joe Quigley
(Posted 11-19-02)

(11-19-02) This Email is in two parts.
The first is rather self explanatory. I will be delivering the memo and the flier as soon as I can on Wednesday morning (and every subsequent morning as the case may be). The second part is a put-up or shut-up call to action and will decide if the bigots are right and we subservient to them, or we have the spherical appendages and/or ovaries to DO SOMETHING.

TO:       Weldon Davis, Principal
FROM: Joseph Quigley, Teacher
DATE:   11/20/02
RE:         YGLA FLIER

On 11/19/02 I submitted a copy of the Young Gay and Lesbian Alliance flier for posting on the Community Bulletin Board.
During lunch I found both the flier and my note requesting its consideration for posting in my mailbox. I assumed that as there was no denial it had been placed in my mailbox for me to post.
Finding the bulletin board open I posted the flier.
When I passed the board at the end of the day I noticed that the flier had been torn down. I base the opinion that it had been torn down on the small pieces of the flier and the staples that remained in the empty space.
If someone other than you had removed it, it could only be because someone felt this censorship was acceptable at NWClassen and acted consistent with that attitude.
If you removed it, then I am confused as to the message sent by its having been placed without any notation in my mailbox.
On a flier concerning a similar group in Norman which you had no reluctance to post, you had included the handwritten notation, "Perfect! This is the kind of place we (?) have been searching for instead of at school."
This present group would be a local and community based group more relevant to the needs of our students which would make it more important to our students.
Also in the mailbox on 11/19/02 I found an irrelevant copy of a 10/22/02 memo I had written about your misattributing to me the history of Gay and Lesbian History Month which you had edited without my knowledge bearing your handwritten notation of 10/23/02 requesting that rather than put things in your mail box I should speak to you in person about material I wished to "discuss".
Clearly this flier was not only something that I chose not to discuss, nor is it subject for discussion. It is a flier relevant to a segment of our student population which is as about a subject of discussion as information relevant to our Black, Hispanic, Asian or "Christian" students, and therefore should have been treated as a flier to be posted and not an issue to be discussed.
It is, quite plainly put, a disservice and an insult to our GLBT students and their friends to always relegate their needs to a topic for discussion as if there were options to the district's claim that we teach all students according to their needs.
I am, therefore, resubmitting this flier for posting, and will continue to do so until you have the courage to do what is right, or the timerity to express in plain not obfuscating terms your objection to it. (end of memo)

I think it is time that the talking stop and we either stand up for the kids or admit  as Shakespeare said at the end of Macbeth all this has been a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing."
I am calling a meeting for
Tuesday, November 26
7:00 pm
at 620 NW 19
OKC (my house)
521-0215
to discuss becoming a vocal community, and what REAL actions we can take to address NWClassen and the District to stop disservicing our GLBT YOUTH.
I am suggesting a regularly scheduled direct and visible action on an on-going basis either at NWClassen, district Headquarters, or both until something is done to end this (what can only be called) demeaning CRAP. Its one thing to wail and gnash our teeth and say there is community support; it is another to act.
People showed up on a weekly basis to save the Gold Dome. People show up weekly to protest the "war" with Iraq. Certainly we can show up for the sake of our students.
Bring yourselves, your ideas, your courage and conviction (and since it is just before pay day, any snacks you might want. I will provide couches, chairs and floor space).
It is time we did something, Or I will just go back to Boston where they are in the 21st century and GLBT students are not second class citizens. I have that option.
Joe

 

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