Gay teen wins right to attend prom with boyfriend

Southern Poverty Law Center

Stacy Dawson, a Missouri high school student, had been told he couldn't attend prom with his boyfriend.

By Elizabeth Chuck, Staff Writer, NBC News

An openly gay Missouri teenager has won the right to attend high school prom with his boyfriend after threatening legal action, the district superintendent said Friday.

Stacy Dawson, a 17-year-old senior at Scott County Central High School in Sikeston, Mo., had been told last year that he couldn't bring his boyfriend due to a line in the school's handbook that said "students will be permitted to invite one guest, girls invite boys and boys invite girls."

When Dawson questioned the policy, he was told by a school administrator that the school board would not consider revising it, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization representing Dawson. So on Thursday -- Valentine's Day -- Dawson had The Southern Poverty Law Center send a letter to Scott County Central High and the school district threatening legal action.

One day later, the district had good news for Dawson: They were removing the offending line from their handbook, and said the line was never meant to be exclusive in the first place.

"I found out why the stipulation in the student handbook was originally put in there, and it's rather innocent, to be honest," Alvin McFerren, Scott County Central School District superintendent, said. "This was during a time 10-15 years ago that the previous administration was having issues with some of the students trying to come in on either the single rate or the couple rate. They implemented that to make sure they couldn't circumvent the rates that students were supposed to pay as they entered into our dances."

McFerren said Dawson will be allowed to go to prom with his boyfriend.

"It was never intended to be a discriminatory thing," he said. "We want an educational environment for all of our kids and we're not ever going to discriminate as to whether or not the board has the policy and we don't do that based on sexual orientation. Period."

McFerren said he felt the community, which has just over 360 students in the entire district, would take the change well.

"We are a family," McFerren said. "We're such a small school that I don't feel as if there will be any negative reactions whatsoever. It was never intended to be a policy that would create any controversy in the first place."

In its letter, the law center alleged that under a 1969 Supreme Court decision -- Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District -- Dawson's school could not legally censor his right to free expression, including the right to express himself by taking a same-sex date. The Tinker ruling declared that students don't ?shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gates.?

The letter also cited a more recent case out of Mississippi, where a girl sued her high school over a ban on same-sex couples at the prom in 2010. Constance McMillen ultimately won the case against Itawamba County Agricultural High School after a federal judge ruled that the school district violated her constitutional rights to freedom of speech by not allowing her to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend to the prom.

Prom is scheduled for April 20. Dawson's lawyer said his family and classmates were supportive of him in his quest to go.?

"Stacy is such a brave and lovely young man," Alesdair Ittelson, a staff attorney at the law center, said. "He encountered this problem, did his research, came to us and said, 'I really want to do something about this,' and we're so proud and honored to be able to fight for his rights in this matter. He has a supportive family and he believes that the other kids at his school want him to be able to attend the prom with his boyfriend."

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/15/16975038-gay-teen-wins-right-to-attend-prom-with-boyfriend?lite

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Putin's anger flares over Sochi Oly cost overruns

SOCHI, Russia (AP) ? A year before the 2014 Winter Olympics are to begin, President Vladimir Putin has demanded that a senior member of the Russian Olympic Committee be fired, apparently due to cost overruns in host city Sochi.

The current price tag for the Sochi Games is 1.5 trillion rubles ($51 billion), which would make them the most expensive games in the history of the Olympics ? more costly even than the much-larger Summer Olympics held in London and Beijing.

The games at the Black Sea resort of Sochi are considered a matter of national pride and one of Putin's top priorities.

Putin's decision came after he scolded officials over a two-year delay and huge cost overruns in the construction of the Sochi ski jump facilities.

The Russian official involved, Akmet Bilalov, had a company that was building the ski jump and its adjacent facilities before selling its stake to state-owned Sberbank last year.

During his tour of Olympic venues, Putin fumed when he heard that the cost of the ski jump had soared from 1.2 billion rubles ($40 million) to 8 billion rubles ($265 million) and the project was behind schedule.

"So a vice president of the Olympic Committee is dragging down the entire construction? Well done! You are doing a good job," Putin said Wednesday, seething with sarcasm.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told reporters Thursday that Putin had recommended that the Russian Olympic Committee fire Bilalov, one of its six vice presidents.

"As far as Bilalov is concerned the president voiced his decision yesterday: People who don't make good on their obligations at such a scale cannot head the Olympic movement in our country," he said.

Most countries that host the Olympics use public funds to pay for most of the construction of the sports venues and new infrastructure like roads and trains. The Russian government, however, has gotten state-controlled companies and tycoons to foot more than half of the bill.

Both the companies and the tycoons understand the importance of maintaining good relations with Putin, who has a lot of prestige riding on the success of the Sochi games.

Kozak said the costs constantly increased for the ski jump project because Bilalov's company did not properly check the land and, as a result, picked a geologically challenging plot.

"His calculations failed," Kozak said.

The Russian Olympic Committee was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that Bilalov's future can only be decided by a session of its executive committee.

Despite these setbacks, Russian officials on Thursday went to great lengths to reiterate that everything in Sochi was now on schedule.

"As IOC members and we stated yesterday, it is already clear that we have succeeded with this immense and possibly the most immense project in Russia's modern history," Kozak said.

Taking a cue from Putin, however, Russian officials sought to play down the high costs. Kozak said the government spent no more than 100 billion rubles ($3 billion) on the Olympic venues and the immediate infrastructure.

The government has spent a total of $13 billion so far, and expects to spend about $18 billion overall before the games begin, Kozak has said previously.

On Thursday, Kozak said it was unfair to compare Sochi's budget to that of previous Olympic games because Russian organizers had to build most of the vital and costly infrastructure that was needed ? roads, railways, tunnels, gas pipelines ? from scratch.

No Russian officials went near the topic of possible corruption, even though Russian business is notoriously plagued by it. Russia last year ranked 133rd out of 176 in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, along with countries such as Kazakhstan, Iran and Honduras.

Although there were no documented cases of corruption directly linked to Olympic construction in Sochi, a dozen officials from the Sochi government have been slapped with charges of corruption in the past year.

Kozak and Sochi officials insist that they're keeping the situation under control and that no money is being stolen at Olympic sites.

Sochi organizers also sought to assuage fears that the 2014 Games may fall victim to a warm and snowless winter ? or a howling blizzard.

Temperatures at Sochi's Krasnaya Polyana ski resort hovered at 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius) on Thursday, and reached 66 degrees F (19 C) in the coastal city of Sochi.

That's after a cold snap the previous week in which athletes competed in test events amid snowstorms as temperatures dipped to 20 degrees F (-6 C).

Dmitry Chernyshenko, head of the local organizing committee, said Sochi boasts one of one Europe's largest snow-making systems and also has equipment that can store snow throughout the summer and protect slopes and tracks from rain and fog. More than 400 snow-making generators will be deployed on the slopes.

He said Sochi has special equipment that can make snow even in temperatures up to 59 degrees (15 C).

"Snow will be guaranteed in 2014," Chernyshenko declared.

Warm temperatures and rain disrupted some of the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

The countdown celebrations were to culminate later Thursday in a star-studded ice show at one of the Olympic arenas, attended by Putin and IOC President Jacques Rogge.

Also Thursday, tickets for the games went on sale online in Russia. The prices range from a low of 500 rubles ($17) to a high of 50,000 rubles ($1,700). Organizers said about 40 percent of the tickets would be priced under 3,000 rubles ($100). The total number of tickets put on sale was not disclosed.

In a bid to combat ticket scalping, Sochi organizers said they would limit the number of tickets that can be bought by one person. For the most popular events, such as the opening ceremony and top ice hockey games, the limit would be four tickets per person.

Sochi organizers will also require visitors to apply for a special spectator pass without which they will not be able to access the venues.

The games run from Feb. 7-23, 2014.

___

Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed to this report from Moscow.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/putins-anger-flares-over-sochi-oly-cost-overruns-161010424--oly.html

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