NY Girls Suspended For Saying Vagina
how stupid ....
March 6, 2007 10:45 p.m. EST
Megan Shannon - All Headline News Staff Writer
Cross River, NY (AHN) - Three teens at a public New York school were suspended after saying the word "vagina" during a public reading of the "Vagina Monologues."
School administrators at John Jay High School in Cross River, who are being criticized and accused of censorship, said the girls are being punished because they disobeyed the agreement that they would not read the word.
Parents, students and author of the off-Broadway play, Eve Ensler, said the school has no right to punish the girls.
Ensler said, "The school's position is absurd, a throwback to the Dark Ages. So what, if children were to hear the word? Would that be terrible? We're not talking about plutonium here, or acid rain, a word that destroys lives. It's a body part!"
She added that the girls should be applauded for not conforming. Ensler said, "Don't we want our children to resist authority when it's not appropriate and wise?"
Students, Megan Reback, Elan Stahl and Hannah Levinson, did their reading Friday night at an event sponsored by the school's literary magazine. At the end, when they got to the part that reads, "vagina", they all said the word at the same time.
Reback said, "It wasn't crude and it wasn't inappropriate and it was very real and very pure."
But administrators argued that the girls should not have agreed to skip the word if they were not planning on following through. Bob Lichtenfeld, superintendent of the Katonah-Lewisboro school district, said it would have been a different story if the girls would have asked to perform the play because attendees would have known what they were attending.
He said, "As long as the intended audience knows what to expect, we don't have a problem with it."
Megan Shannon - All Headline News Staff Writer
Cross River, NY (AHN) - Three teens at a public New York school were suspended after saying the word "vagina" during a public reading of the "Vagina Monologues."
School administrators at John Jay High School in Cross River, who are being criticized and accused of censorship, said the girls are being punished because they disobeyed the agreement that they would not read the word.
Parents, students and author of the off-Broadway play, Eve Ensler, said the school has no right to punish the girls.
Ensler said, "The school's position is absurd, a throwback to the Dark Ages. So what, if children were to hear the word? Would that be terrible? We're not talking about plutonium here, or acid rain, a word that destroys lives. It's a body part!"
She added that the girls should be applauded for not conforming. Ensler said, "Don't we want our children to resist authority when it's not appropriate and wise?"
Students, Megan Reback, Elan Stahl and Hannah Levinson, did their reading Friday night at an event sponsored by the school's literary magazine. At the end, when they got to the part that reads, "vagina", they all said the word at the same time.
Reback said, "It wasn't crude and it wasn't inappropriate and it was very real and very pure."
But administrators argued that the girls should not have agreed to skip the word if they were not planning on following through. Bob Lichtenfeld, superintendent of the Katonah-Lewisboro school district, said it would have been a different story if the girls would have asked to perform the play because attendees would have known what they were attending.
He said, "As long as the intended audience knows what to expect, we don't have a problem with it."
RIP TD 
~Accepting design works~ 
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