Lance Sanderson wanted to take a boy from another school to the dance at his Catholic prep school, all-male Christian Brothers High School, but administrators wouldn’t allow him to.
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In the letter, Sanderson said, “You won’t let me dance with my date and you won’t let me go to class now, either”. Tomorrow at CBHS, I was going to meet with admissions representatives from around the country (they do not visit often).
As CBHS is a private high school, there probably isn’t much Sanderson can do in order to undo the suspension.
Sanderson was then asked to go home. He said we don’t actually know what reason behind CBHS’ decision to dismiss Sanderson for the week, and the school may decide to just remain quiet.
Sanderson said administrators brought him into an office Monday morning around 7:30 and told him they had received “insults from both sides of the argument” and that it had reflected poorly on “the Brothers”.
Christian Brothers High School has not responded to media requests by press time.
Sanderson was featured in a Commercial Appeal story Friday after his school told him he could not bring a male date from another school to the dance Saturday, citing a policy that no boys from other schools can attend CBHS dances.
Sanderson said he was told “we have 890 other kids to worry about” and that they “can’t deal with this now”. “I hope to be welcomed back into a classroom setting soon”.
‘I just want to bring a date of my choice to homecoming like the rest of my friends and classmates. “I feel like there are a number of things the administration could do”.
“I haven’t done anything wrong and haven’t hurt anybody”, Sanderson continued in his letter, which has yet to receive a response.
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On the petition on change.org, he wrote: ‘One administrator told me that even though some people interpreted Pope Francis’s teachings on the issue as meaning they should support same-sex couples, these people are, ‘not the authority to which Christian Brothers High School is accountable’. If they want to arbitrarily decide that a gay student should be sent home for exposing a tension between their bigotry and their self-professed acceptance, that’s their prerogative.
