The News You May Have Missed

There are no more “freshmen” at Amherst Regional High School in Massachusetts. School officials have deemed the term “misogynistic, oppressive, and non-inclusive,” so now freshmen are referred to as “ninth-graders.” Marta M. Guevara, Assistant Principal for Student Support told The Springfield Republican (Nov. 2) that the freshman purge was initiated during a week that highlighted issues surrounding violence against women. “The issue has to do with the connotation: it’s a male word,” she explained. Guevara also suggested a sexual connotation to the word — “as in men being fresh toward women.”

According to a report in London’s Observer (Nov. 13), “polyamorists” are coming out of the closet all across America. Polyamorists, who call themselves “polys,” are those who do not limit themselves to one serious emotional commitment but maintain multiple marriage-like relationships — homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual. The polys liken their “coming out” as poly in a society prejudiced against their lifestyle to the struggle by “gays” and lesbians for equal rights. “Our community is where gays and lesbians were in the Sixties,” explained Justen Bennett-MacCubbin, who is in “two serious gay relationships.” According to the Observer, polys believe that monogamy is unnatural. Polys claim to be honest about the human condition.

Berkeley High School in northern California now has an officially registered “Condom Club.” Enrollment in the school group entitles each student to free lessons on how to use the prophylactics, as well as a supply of 12 condoms each week. G. Pascal Zachary, whose 14-year-old son attends the public school, commented in a San Francisco Chronicle column (Nov. 13): “What left me pondering the ingenuity of high school administrators was the number of condoms on offer… I don’t know sex workers who need that many condoms.”