Bomb Threat Keeps Some Students Home
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ORANGE — More than a third of El Modena High School students stayed home from school Monday as protest groups staged competing rallies outside the school where controversy over a club for gay and straight students has raged for months. Three groups gathered outside the school by midmorning: nearly a dozen anti-gay protesters from a Kansas church, about 20 supporters of the club, and a group protesting the views of both.
Despite some verbal sniping among protesters, the event was peaceful. Police reported no violence or arrests.
About 700 El Modena students stayed home Monday because of unsubstantiated rumors of a bomb threat at the 1,935-student school.
The controversy centers on the Gay-Straight Alliance. The Orange school board in December unanimously voted to bar the club from school grounds, but the group has been meeting under terms of a federal judge’s order while a lawsuit filed by the student club founders wends its way through the courts.
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