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`Vagina' lands students in hot water

The three girls had been warned by teachers not to utter the word. But they chose to say it anyway -- vagina -- in unison at a high school forum, and were swiftly punished by their school.

Now the case of the three juniors at John Jay High School, in the affluent hamlet of Cross River, 80km north of Manhattan, has become a cause celebre among those who say that the school has gone too far, touching off a larger debate about censorship and about what constitutes vulgar language.

Is vagina, or the "v-word," as some around here have referred to it, such a bad word?

"We want to make it clear that we didn't do this to be defiant of the school administration," said Megan Reback, one of the three who received one-day suspensions for using the word during a reading of The Vagina Monologues at the forum last Friday.

"We did it because we believe in the word vagina, and because we believe it's not a bad word," she said.

"It shouldn't be a word that is ever censored, and the way in which we used it was respectable," she said.

School officials said that the girls, all 16, were suspended not for using the word but rather for insubordination.

Principal Rich Leprine said on Tuesday that the girls were told not to use the word because young children could be in the audience, but that they used it anyway after agreeing not to.

"When a student is told by faculty members not to present specified material because of the composition of the audience and they agree to do so, it is expected that the commitment will be honored and the directive will be followed," he said in a written statement.

"When a student chooses not to follow that directive, consequences follow," Leprine wrote.

The girls say they never made such an agreement.

There has been an outpouring of support from the girls' peers, as well as from many parents, who contend that the word is not vulgar and that the effort to muffle the three was censorship.

Classmates have gone so far as to make T-shirts and posters to protest the punishment, and a Facebook site opposing the suspensions has attracted attention from people nationwide who have posted messages like: "We support you, and we support your courage. Vagina Pride!"

The girls have also been embraced by the writer of The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler, who grew up in nearby Scarsdale and said she might visit the school to discuss the controversy and to encourage people to feel comfortable about saying the word.
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