March 23, 2010

My School's Response to Cuccinelli

So here's what happened:

We got back to school after having spent the last weekend of spring break organizing via Facebook. Letters were written to the Board of Visitors, but our president had just resigned, so no one was really getting much response, the BoV being otherwise occupied. A petition was started.

It got 1,200-ish signatures, which is about a fourth of the entire school. We were all ready to have a protest and everything.

Except that then Governor McDonnell released his backpedaling non-legally-biding totally-not-good-enough executive directive - probably realizing that Virginia state schools have a reputation for actually being pretty damn awesome, and Cuccinelli's douchebaggery was damaging that reputation in a big way. The school promptly put up a little message saying "Governor's Statement reaffirms non-discrimination policy," the BoV voted on it officially and kept the current policy in place a week later, and all returned to normal.

Which is kind of a let-down, really. It would have been fun to have a protest. But it was also cool to see all the uproar on Facebook translate into some sort of results, even if Cuccinelli is still standing by his opinion and nothing has really changed legally anyway.

He'll be busy suing the federal government over health care now, maybe he'll leave the gays alone for a while.

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