N.M. School Nixes All Student Club Meetings

Critics are questioning whether a school district in eastern New Mexico's recent decision to ban extracurricular clubs from meeting during school hours is directly related to a gay-straight alliance's recent application to become an official group.

The school board in Clovis, N.M. voted Tuesday to ban clubs from convening during school hours and from using school resources for meetings.

"This sort of tactic has been used in the past by school districts to discourage gay-straight clubs from forming," Micah McCoy, a spokesman for the ACLU of New Mexico, told Reuters. "A lot of alarm bells went off when we saw this."

High school senior James Walker said the gay straight alliance had planned to meet after school, not during, and said it would be difficult to attract interested individuals without being allowed to distribute flyers or post announcements on meetings. "Now it's almost an underground operation," he told Reuters.

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