Letters are great. And if you want to be more annoying to them with your letter, send them a fax: (219) 977-2168, which I got from

http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/browse_school/in/640

Even if they don't read your letter, they will be annoyed with having their fax machine clogged. They can't ignore that.

The only problem: Who has a FAX machine?

But who has time for a fax? What about an email address. Mmmm, juicy, juicy email. Why, my goodness, here's an email address for the school! Lookey there.

WestSide@GaryCSC.k12.in.us

Anyone have Diane's email?

Well, what do know?
For those who *do* have time for a fax, here's a free online service that includes an ad on the cover page to further annoy, clog, disrupt...

http://faxzero.com/

P.S. Works like a charm:

Dear Laurence Ballard,

Your 1-page fax to Diane Rouse, Principal at 2199772168 has been sent successfully.

Thank you
FaxZero.com

it's possible the principle was worried about the safety of the cross-dressing student during the prom. especially if he's responsible for their safety during the event.

so he made a judgement call.

Um, preventing kids from getting beat up by other kids at a closed school event swarming with chaperones is part of their job.

Gary Indiana smells worse than Everett during its pulp mill pinacle...the armpit of Indiana

If *she* made a 'judgement call' for 'safety,' it was a bad one.

As Aki Kurose once explained to me, "If we were in the camps for our safety, why were all of the rifles pointing inside?"

Call the cops, if you fear so much for the kid's welfare - but not for wearing a dress...

I'm from Gary and so are the Jacksons.

And read the whole story—she let a girl attend the prom in a tux. So cross-dressing is fine—so long as girls are doing it. Sex discrimination anyone?

And come on—for the gay kid's safetly, the principal could stop him from attending school altogether! How about his: Instead of tossing gay kids out of the prom (in dresses or not), toss out the violent kids.

Header for your faxes:

We will convince the world tat your town's name has a silent R.

I'm not only from Gary, my dad taught at West Side for many years.

Good luck in getting them to hear you, though by all means, try. West Side is in the old Gary neighborhood of Froebel, and while it doesn't look as dangerous as the area around where, say, Emerson or Horace Mann high schools are/were, it is one violent, harsh place. A guy in a dress won't matter much to those trying to deal with the existing environment there.

There's also a certain symmetry to all this given that the prom was in Hobart and not Gary - Hobart isn't known to be all that forgiving a place for pretty much anyone deviating from the norm. It's interesting that West Side decided to hold the prom in Hobart, given that the town is mostly white and West Side overwhelmingly black.

My two bits...

I bet Mr. Rowan is going to be sorry he said this:


"Sylvester Rowan, assistant to Gary Schools Superintendent Mary Steele, said the decision to exclude Logan was based on “the dress code, not the student’s homosexuality. That’s his personal preference.�


I think he means that the student's clothing is his preference, but someone is definitely going to say that Rowan expressed sexual orientation as a personal preference.