As of last Monday, Brandon Flyte is no longer a student at West Linn High School.

He aired Brokeback High (the video project he was required to make in Ms. Houck’s English 12) to his Marine Biology class on a Friday. The following Monday morning, he was called into a conference with the three vice-principals of West Linn High School. Now before he showed Brokeback High to his English class, he was required by the administration to edit out a scene of the two lead male characters snuggling together shirtless in bed. When he showed his Marine Biology class the film, the snuggle scene --which he might add was very tastefully done-- was left in. Apparently the administration thought that this was a big enough violation to warrant an expulsion. Only, it’s not being called an expulsion. It’s basically a ‘mandatory transfer’ to the local community college. He have no choice in it. West Linn High says they’ll pay for him to finish up his last 2 months of high school at Clackamas Community College, and he'll be able to walk with his high school class at graduation and attend Prom as a guest, "depending on behavior this spring related to West Linn High School."

For the record, he's never been a model student. His attendance hasn’t been perfect, and by that I mean it’s been pretty irregular. The High School is also saying that his ‘expulsion’ is due to a broken attendance record, but first of all they never once said that expulsion was a possible consequence for absences, and second of all, he had perfect attendance for the weeks prior to my ‘expulsion’. If they were going to remove him from school for not showing up, they would’ve done it a while ago, like when he actually wasn’t showing up.

One has to wonder if any of this would've happened had the two characters snuggling in his film been male and female. We're led to believe that diversity is encouraged in schools, but when a 17 year-old straight kid makes a serious gay love story and is expelled for it, it just begs the question of exactly what kind of policy was the administration following? He recalls Tim Fields, one of the vice-principals at my school, having to think for at least a minute when asked by the office lady, "What should I put down for 'reason of withdrawal'?" If the basis of his expulsion is so unclear to them, then surely the circumstances surrounding it are extremely questionable and the grounds on which he was removed are both unfair and unexplainable.

Thankfully, he's got a tremendous amount of support behind him. We'll see where this goes.

"Lets start some shit!" ~Leighton