Dark Irony–Expelled for Being a Lesbian

As anyone familiar with schools knows, it isn’t uncommon for their young women, when in groups, to hold hands in public whether or not they’re gay. When, several springs back, Simsbury, Connecticut Masters School junior, Rachel Aviles (along with numbers of other girls in her class) held hands on a class trip and pretended to be married, word got back to the forty-year-old Christian academy’s administration. All the girls on the trip were hauled before  the Headmaster and asked whether or not they were lesbians.

Ms. Aviles told Headmaster, Jon F. Holley, the truth, that she is gay, and for telling the truth she was asked to withdraw from the school or face expulsion. She was thrown out just prior to what would have been her graduation year.

There is not only no evidence that Ms. Aviles ever sexually harassed another student, there’s no evidence at all she made her gender orientation in any manner a salient part of her life at school. While some of her friends say they knew for some time that Ms Aviles is gay, none report that it ever affected or negatively influenced her relationships with her classmates. Teachers report to having been clueless (of course) in a context in which they would have been expected to report such rumors.

Ms Aviles, a student otherwise in good standing, will find a better  placement for herself. The Master School’s slogan is  “Education From the Inside Out.” I suppose, for the Masters School, that depends on what’s Inside. The school motto is Veritas Vos Liberabit–“The Truth Shall Set You Free”. How darkly comic that is.