BOURBONNAIS – Fans who would normally attend tonight’s Boilermakers games will be shut out after the school decided to limit attendance to only families of players.
No other students or fans will be allowed at tonight’s game.
“This decision was made due to the current climate of our school community.” BBCHS Athletics said in a statement this afternoon.
It comes hours after small group of students held a protest early this morning outside Bradley Bourbonnais Community High School due to alleged incidents of sexual harassment and assaults. As of 1pm, a petition started by Melanie Jensen posted to Change.org had received over 2,700 signatures for “Justice for women against BBCHS.”
“Multiple students, women, including my close friend have been sexually harassed and assaulted by a specific person.” Jensen says in the petition.
“The school has done nothing to help or change this from happening and instead have switched my friends schedule completely so she doesn’t have to see him, instead of punishing him. People have talked to the principal and his only response was that “it didn’t or doesn’t violate the student handbook”. It does not matter if it violates the student handbook either way it is still WRONG. On another note it does violate the student handbook, meaning the principal isn’t even following his own rules. He’s letting people get away with things they shouldn’t be getting away with, and it needs to change. These women need to be brought to justice and they need to feel safe in their school. Instead of punishing women who are getting harassed and assaulted let’s punish the people who are doing it. The teachers don’t care either. We’ve put multiple posters and papers up about it and they just take them down without a care, they probably don’t even look at it. We shouldn’t stop until this changes. If BBCHS wants to be known as the school who lets this kind of stuff happen, then let them. But I won’t, and multiple other people won’t let this go by without a care. Something needs to change. If you sign this petition then hopefully the school opens their eyes and does something about it, if not then we’ll keep doing stuff about it.”
Around 100 students walked out of school this afternoon to join the protest just outside.
Since then, multiple groups have offered their vocal support to the students, including Clove Alliance. “We Believe You. We Support You. We are Here for You.” The group said this afternoon.
