Cheerleader who wouldn’t cheer for her attacker appealing court ruling

A lot of folks in Texas are wishing that this story would just go away, no doubt. But a tenacious (former) Silsbee High School cheerleader is refusing to let go. The woman, now an 18-year-old college student identified only as H.S., is appealing a ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which threw out her case in Sept. In her original lawsuit, H.S. was suing to be reinstated on the Silsbee cheerleading team, after being thrown off for not cheering for a basketball player whom she alleges had sexually assaulted her at an off-campus party. H.S. had sat with her arms folded while the rest of the cheerleading team cheered for Rakheem Bolton, who was shooting free throws. That was in 2008; both students are now in college.

The cheerleading incident occurred in 2009, after a grand jury had refused to indict Bolton citing lack of evidence. A subsequent grand jury did indict him, and he was kicked out of school. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge and received a suspended sentence.

But it’s the reaction by school administrators, rather than the decision by the courts, that has H.S., her family and many around the country watching this closely.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

More than 40 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech … at the schoolhouse gate,” the former cheerleader’s judicial rebuff reflects a shift in perspective that has the courts showing more deference to school authorities.

“What I want out of the whole thing is for somebody to admit they were wrong,” the 18-year-old woman, identifying herself by her initials H.S., said in an interview last week. After undergoing therapy and graduating from high school, she’s taking a semester off before college, where she plans to study forensic science, partly because of what happened to her.

Of the cheering incident in 2009:

H.S. joined in leading cheers for the Silsbee High team. But when Bolton went to the foul line, and the cheers included his name, she stepped back, folded her arms and sat down.

“I didn’t want to have to say his name, and I didn’t want to cheer for him,” H.S. said. “I didn’t want to encourage anything he was doing.”

She said she had done the same thing at an earlier game without incident. This time, she said, she was called into a hallway at halftime, and the district superintendent, his assistant and the school principal told her she had to cheer for Bolton or go home.

Her father came out of the stands — where the fans, he said, were mocking the girl — to join his crying daughter. After a shouting confrontation with the school administrators, he, his wife and their daughter left the game.

In the following weeks, H.S. said, “it was my family against the community” of Silsbee, a town of 6,300 where “football is everything. … They were the star athletes and I was standing up to them.”

She said youths shouted “slut” at her as she drove to school with her younger sister, who soon transferred to another school.

The only response from school officials, H.S. said, was to advise her to stay away from Bolton.

Why do so many meatheads gravitate toward the teaching profession? Can anyone explain the school’s position here? Because I fail to see how these folks shouldn’t all be set adrift in the Atlantic wearing chum overcoats.

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Texas cheerleader suing — didn’t root for attacker [San Francisco Chronicle]