From The Los Angeles Times: The Newport-Mesa (Calif.) Unified School District has agreed to provide harassment and discrimination prevention training to Corona del Mar High School students, teachers and administrators and other district officials as part of a legal settlement over harassment stemming from a planned student production of the musical "Rent." The lawsuit alleged that in January, three football players from the school posted a video on Facebook in which they threatened to rape and kill the student who had a lead part in the play and used slurs to describe another classmate who they believed was gay. The student-actress, Hail Ketchum, 17, now is a freshman studying theater at Loyola Marymount University.
Corona del Mar made news earlier this year when its principal canceled "Rent: School Edition" because of concerns about its content. It was later reinstated. Officials with the American Civil Liberties Union, who sued the district in March, said the controversy over the play, which includes gay characters and some with AIDS, was just one example of official tolerance of misogyny and homophobia on campus.
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