NJ High School Students Organize For Progressives

And they’re using a law signed during the Reagan years. “A group of budding activists — the causes they are pressing for range from ending gun violence to eradicating the scourge of foam lunchroom trays — has taken flight at the high school, but organizers had to hire a lawyer to make it happen,” Amanda Oglesby reports in The Asbury Park Press. “STAND, Students Take Action for a New Day, a chapter of the High School Democrats of America, has won official recognition from school district leaders, who at first gave the organizers the cold shoulder: no faculty adviser, no presence in the yearbook, and no placing the club name on their college transcripts, students and their attorney told the Press.”

“The school officials relented — on all but the adviser part — after hiring Fairfield-based attorney Michael Malia. He advised the school board that in denying the club it was violating the federal Equal Access Act, a 1984 law to compel federally funded secondary schools to provide equal access to extracurricular student clubs.”

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