This is old news already. They have walked back their decision and gave her the diploma.
Edit: yes as someone pointed out they only reversed their decision because of the news coverage.
Only because she sued the school and her story went viral. If the news hadn’t grabbed it, I can almost guarantee the school would have just swept it under the rug and carried on as usual.
I like how a school thinks it’s their responsibility to give out punishment here. Like, they think it’s in their scope. What other obscure things do they handle in the community with their Letters of Punishment? Maintaining hedge heights? Sentencing criminals? Ensuring fresh undies are worn?
This. I mean the primary responsibility of schools is to teach and certify academic achievement. They should never withhold certification on non-academic grounds.
I’ll just leave this here: Robbins vs Lower Marion
Ah, I remember this. The more you dig into it, the worse it gets; The footage from students’ laptops was kept on servers in a room that wasn’t access controlled, so basically anyone in the school could walk in and plug a USB drive into them. And that’s exactly what happened; Investigators found evidence that footage had been copied to external devices and wiped from servers.
But they couldn’t narrow down who did it, because there was no access control on the server room… If the room had a badge reader, they could have compared timestamps to badge swipes. And if the room was access controlled, then only authorized personnel who worked on the servers would have been given access in the first place. But instead, they just let every single teacher, administrator, and janitor have a key to the room.
It’s like if someone intentionally went out of their way to ensure pedos had easy access to cameras in kids’ bedrooms.
yikes
The lawsuit was filed after 15-year-old high school sophomore (second year student) Blake Robbins was disciplined at school for his behavior in his bedroom.[6][14] The school based its decision to discipline Robbins on a photograph that had been secretly taken of him in his bedroom, via the webcam in his school-issued laptop. Without telling its students, the schools remotely accessed their school-issued laptops to secretly take pictures of students in their own homes, their chat logs, and records of the websites they visited.
Incredibly gross.
The school is apparently not claiming that it’s against the rules for her to come out as gay, but rather that her mention of “ruthless Trump supporting ‘Jesus’ mfs" is vulgar and disrespectful. That seems like quite a stretch.
So much for the “freedom of speech not freedom from consequence” crowd.
It’s only ever bad when the consequences hit someone that you judge is in the right.
Especially if they can’t give any other examples where use of vulgar and disrespectful language off campus and outside of school hours led to a student being expelled (which is what withholding a diploma is effectively)
The article appears to contradict itself - it says they’re withholding her diploma but also that they’re mailing it to her and simply not allowing her to participate in the graduation ceremony. I hope she does get the diploma mailed to her so she can put this behind her.
[The letter from the Tennessee Preparatory Christian School] goes on to read, “Morgan will not comment about the school or people associated with the school. If online slander continues, records of posts and messages will be forwarded to colleges and universities as part of a comprehensive student file. If the above are not adhered to, Morgan Armstrong’s diploma will be withheld and not mailed on June 15, 2025.”
News clip: https://youtu.be/oJCCJ2owvpo
Way to publicize your bigotry, hypocrisy, and brokenness. I can’t wait for the day where people rise above this behavior.
But of course, anyone reading the gospels can totally see that this is precisely how Jesus would act. Right? Right? 🙄
I first read about this at The Friendly Atheist:
Tennessee teen sues Christian school for withholding diploma after she posted about her girlfriend
It’s a better article because it skewers the school harder than this outlet for being hypocrites.
Ok Alito, so where’s your free speech protections for this case?
The 11 year old bigot can wear a shirt that puts people down, but this person can’t express themselves online simply stating a fact about themselves?
This is a private school so I don’t see how that’s relevant.
Except it’s licensed by the state of Tennessee as an acceptable place to send your kids that won’t have them or you catching a truancy charge. Constitutional protections against government overreach apply to licensed agents of the state in a lot of other situations, not sure why this one should be different.
