By Ron Meyer, Young America's Foundation
Published by Human Events Online
The assault on conservative ideas has a new battleground: the high school campus. And now, even students at private religious institutions aren’t safe from ideological discrimination.
La Reina High School, a Catholic school for girls in Thousand Oaks, Calif., has denied student Isabella Foxen’s application to start a Young Americans for Freedom chapter. From the beginning of the application process, Isabella faced roadblocks.
Administrators arbitrarily demanded—not following any written policy—that Isabella acquire 35 student signatures before considering her application to start a club. Isabella found 86 students to sign on, but the school denied her application anyway.
La Reina’s excuse? Principal Shannon Gomez said the school’s administration “did not feel the club fostered a balance[d] political perspective,” and according to a local paper, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (which oversees La Reina) “said no political student clubs are allowed—liberal or conservative—because federal law forbids nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations such as the archdiocese from political activity.”
Young Americans for Freedom is not political, and has had a historic presence at hundreds of Catholic colleges and high schools across the country. It is a project of Young America’s Foundation, and both were founded by Catholics (William F. Buckley and Ron Robinson). Never before has this excuse been used to a chapter or event on a Catholic campus.
...
Continue reading here: *HUMAN EVENTS*
