DETROIT (AP) — High school economics teacher Jay McDowell says he didn’t like where the discussion was going after a student told his classmates he didn’t “accept gays,” so McDowell kicked the boy out of class for a day. In return, the teacher was kicked out of Howell High School in Michigan for a day — suspended without pay for violating the student’s free speech rights. The incident has sparked intense debate in Howell, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northwest of Detroit, over defending civil rights without trampling the U.S. constitution’s right to free speech. It’s gained far wider attention since a local newspaper released video of a 14-year-old gay student from another city defending McDowell at a Howell school board meeting. On Oct. 20, McDowell told a student in his classroom to remove a belt buckle with the Confederate flag, the symbol of the southern confederacy that seceded from the United States over slavery, kicking off the Civil War in the 1860s. She complied, but it prompted a question from a boy about how the flag differs from the rainbow flag, a symbol of pride for the gay community. “I explained the difference between the flags, and he said, ‘I don’t accept gays,’” said McDowell, 42, who was wearing a shirt with an anti-gay bullying message. McDowell said he told the student he couldn’t say that in class. “And he said, ‘Why? I don’t accept gays. It’s against my religion.’ I reiterated that it’s not appropriate to say something like that in class,” McDowell said Monday. McDowell said he sent the boy out of the room for a one-day class suspension. Another boy asked if he also could leave because he also didn’t accept gays. “The classroom discussion was heading in a direction I didn’t want it to head,” McDowell said. McDowell soon received a reprimand letter from the district that said his actions violated the students’ free speech rights as well as school policy. It also said he “purposefully initiated a controversial issue” by wearing the T-shirt featuring the anti-gay bullying message. “I thought it was a really great, teachable moment,” McDowell said of his decision to remove the student from class. Graeme Taylor is among those who agree. The 14-year-old, who does not go to Howell schools, says he is gay and attended a recent school board meeting to praise a teacher who “finally stood up and said something.” “I’ve been in classrooms where children have said the worst things,” the boy told the board. “The kinds of things that drove me to a suicide attempt when I was 9 years old.” Video of Graeme’s comments had been viewed on YouTube more than 13,000 times as of Monday evening, when Howell schools held a community diversity forum that district spokeswoman Kim Root said was meant to be a step forward. “We can learn some things from this episode,” she said, adding the district hoped to receive recommendations from the public to improve “the tolerance of the district and enhance diversity efforts we already have in place.” Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Legal Project, credits McDowell for trying to create a “welcoming environment for all students.” But Kaplan said the “teachable moment” would have come if the students stayed in the classroom. “We believe, based on those statements — as offensive and upsetting as they were — they were protected speech,” Kaplan said. “The only way we’re going to create a better environment in schools is to start talking about this.” Kaplan said Howell schools have expressed interest in accepting the ACLU ‘s offer to provide in-person training to students, faculty and staff. He said such training could provide a better understanding of what can be said and done. McDowell has filed a complaint against the district over the discipline he received, but said Monday he primarily wants to “force the school to look at itself.” “I want to force adults to look at what situation we’ve created,” he said. “I would really like us to be more aggressive in our policing of harassing and bullying.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

OXFORD, Ohio (AP) — Sorority spring formals call up visions of young women in colorful dresses dancing the night away — not vomiting on tables, urinating in sinks or having sex in closets. The drunken shenanigans of three sororities at Miami University in southwest Ohio sound like something out of Animal House and were especially startling for a school that frequently makes the top 50 in a U.S News & World Report academic ranking but never makes lists of big-time party schools. CAMPUS DRINKING: College’s problem or society’s? FRESHMEN: Study booze more than books The school suspended two of the sororities and put the third on probation. A task force is reviewing discipline and education policies on student behavior and alcohol, and the campus group governing sororities says it will begin teaching new members to speak out when they witness bad behavior. There is little evidence excessive alcohol consumption is any worse at Miami than other colleges, but students are worried the antics will damage the school’s reputation. “It’s embarrassing,” said Christina Zielke, 21, a senior from Cleveland, who doesn’t belong to a sorority. “This kind of thing gives a bad name not just to the Greek system but to the university and students like me who aren’t in the system.” Students also are worried the debauchery could even devalue a Miami diploma, said Heath Ingram, student government president. “They’re angry about the actions of a few damaging Miami’s reputation and the effect that might have on getting into the best graduate programs and job opportunities,” he said. The three sororities’ spring formals took place over the span of about a month. On March 26, Alpha Xi Delta sisters and their dates vomited, dropped drinks on the dance floor and tried to steal booze at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, center officials reported. One male even tried to urinate on the center’s Slave Pen, a slave-holding pen reclaimed from a Kentucky farm, the officials said. Two weeks later at the Pi Beta Phi formal, staff at Lake Lyndsay Lodge in nearby Hamilton found a couple having sex in a closet and two girls “repeatedly trying to urinate into the sinks on the bathroom counter,” the lodge said in a complaint letter to the school. It complained of students vomiting, flipping over an appetizer table and of being so drunk they couldn’t walk. On April 23, about 30 students on the way home from a Zeta Tau Alpha formal trashed a bus and harassed and shouted obscenities at the driver, who tossed them off, the transportation company said. The company had to send another bus. Miami suspended Alpha Xi Delta and Pi Beta Phi and put Zeta Tau Alpha on probation. Zeta Tau Alpha’s Miami chapter president, Meghan Hughes, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that “while a small percentage of our members behaved inappropriately, we all take responsibility.” Other members or officers of the local chapters did not respond to requests for comment. National leaders of the sororities supported the school’s discipline and put their chapters on probation, though some noted that members told them some of the claims were exaggerated. About one-third of Miami’s 16,000 students belong to one of its more than 50 Greek groups. Larissa Spreng, president of the Miami Panhellenic Association governing campus sororities, said students in fraternities and sororities are disappointed in behavior she says doesn’t represent the Greek community. She called it “an atypical Miami semester.” The association requires new members to take a program on managing alcohol and other risks. Next year, for the first time, it will focus on the need for bystanders to speak out when witnessing bad behavior, Spreng said. A new task force of Greek and non-Greek students, staff and student-group advisers is meeting this summer to review and recommend changes in discipline and education policies on student behavior and alcohol, said student affairs Vice President Barbara Jones. The school already requires freshmen to complete an online alcohol-education program. Miami, which has had to discipline other Greek groups over alcohol, last year invited a national Greek coalition to assess its Greek organizations and programs. The school is implementing the group’s recommendations to improve Greek values, including more alumni and faculty involvement. Some educators and researchers suggest binge drinking among college students has increased over the past decade — and that women are catching up to men in terms of the percentage who binge — but statistics from major national studies indicate very little change. Schools are seeing increases in both the number and severity of alcohol-related incidents, not just among sororities and fraternities, said W. Scott Lewis, president of the Association for Student Conduct Administration. The disparity between stable drinking trends and reports of worse behavior may be that “we really don’t have good measures of behavior associated with drinking and parties,” said Robert Saltz, senior scientist at the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, Calif. The two- and one-year suspensions for Alpha Xi Delta and Pi Beta Phi mean they lose their campus dorm suites and can’t recruit members or participate as a group in campus activities. Zeta Tau Alpha can’t hold social events with alcohol the first year of its two-year probation. Jenny Hoy, the mother of a Chi Omega sorority member at Miami, thought the discipline was fair. “As a parent, I’m concerned about what is basically roguish behavior, but I don’t believe it will permanently damage the school’s image,” said Hoy, 46, of Reno A member of another Miami sorority doesn’t approve of the conduct but doesn’t think all members misbehaved. “I don’t think it’s fair that people who were innocent are being punished, too,” said Kappa Kappa Gamma member Rachael Fraleigh, 19, of Chicago. Lake Lyndsay Lodge manager Lyndsay Rapier-Phipps, a Miami graduate, acknowledged that about a quarter of the students were the worst troublemakers at Pi Beta Phi’s formal. But she said others “just stood around watching and laughing.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.