Student Speaks Out After Principal Censors Her Prom Outfit
Claudetteia Love is at odds with her school principal because she wants to wear a tuxedo to prom. (Photo: Facebook)
A Louisiana teenager has decided to skip her senior prom rather than bow to her principal’s alleged ban on her outfit of choice: a tuxedo.
Claudetteia Love, a senior at Carroll High School in Monroe, Louisiana, is an ace student and was one of several chosen to represent the success of a magnet program there at a recent school board meeting, according to the News-Star. She’ll soon attend Jackson State University on a full academic scholarship. Love is also a self-identified lesbian, and believes the attitude against her choice of a non-traditional prom outfit stems from prejudice about her sexual orientation.
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“Everyone started to ask me if I would wear a tux, and I said that I don’t know if I would be allowed to wear one,” she tells Yahoo Parenting, explaining that it was her peers who first had an innate understanding that she’d not be shopping for prom gowns this year. “So there was a senior meeting where he had the prom committee to address it.” That’s when the principal seems to have gotten wind of the plan, putting the kibosh on it.
“I have not experienced any anti-LGBT discrimination at my school until now,” Love says, adding that she’s been out about her sexuality since she was just 13 years old. “My bravery has come from the support of my family. Academically, I haven’t let anything hold me back and I’ve always tried to do better.” She says she will attend the prom if the school reverses its ban on her outfit. But otherwise, she’s staying home on principle.
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“There are people in the world that won’t accept you, but they don’t have to be so judgmental and make you feel like you’re less of a person and that you shouldn’t express yourself,” she told the News-Star. “I told my mom, ‘They’re using me. They put me in all these honors and advanced placement classes so I can take all of these tests and get good grades and better the school, but when it’s time for me to celebrate the fact that I’ve accomplished what I need to accomplish and I’m about to graduate, they don’t want to let me do it the way I want to,’” Love said.
Supportive family members include the teenager’s mother, Geraldine Jackson. “I love my daughter and I stand behind her 100,” she wrote on her Facebook page. She told the local paper that she went to talk to principal Patrick Taylor on her daughter’s behalf and that he was unmoved. “He said that the faculty that is working the prom told him they weren’t going to work the prom if (girls) were going to wear tuxes,” she said. “That’s his exact words. 'Girls wear dresses and boys wear tuxes, and that’s the way it is.’ I feel like he’s taking his values and throwing them on my daughter because of what her preference is and what she represents.”
Photo: Facebook
Yahoo Parenting was not able to reach Taylor or anyone else at Carroll High School on Monday, the first day of the school’s spring break.
According to the national student organization GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), Love is not alone in experiencing this type of bias at school. “We know, unfortunately, it’s all too common,” Emily Greytak, director of research for GLSEN, tells Yahoo Parenting. In a survey of more than 8,000 students, she says, “almost one in five was not permitted to wear clothes thought to be of another gender,” while more than a third of students surveyed said that such a rule had been imposed by someone else in their school. Such rules, Greytak explains, “could be based on both gender expression and sexual orientation — it’s tricky, because they’re so conflated,” and it’s one of the reasons that GLSEN does not believe in schools having gender-based dress codes.
Other reasons are the many negative repercussions on students. According to the research, Greytak notes, when students experience LGBT discrimination in school — regardless of whether they’ve also been bullied or harassed — there are many fallouts. “They’ve had lower self-esteem, lower levels of school connectedness, higher levels of depression. If you are told you’re not okay in school — especially by the administration in charge — that can really affect your psyche.”
Luckily, Monroe City School Board president Rodney McFarland told the News-Star that he would advocate on behalf of Love, who had planned on attending the prom, to be held on April 24, with a group of friends. "As school board president, I don’t agree with Carroll banning her from her prom just because of what she wants to wear — that’s discrimination,” he said. “As far as I know there is no Monroe City School Board policy saying what someone has to wear to attend the prom. You can’t just go making up policies.”
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