Constance McMillen’s story was already a dramatic example of exactly how far the fight for equality in this country hasn’t come. The Mississippi teen made national headlines when she sued the Itawamba County School District for canceling the senior prom in order to prevent Constance from attending with her girlfriend. Despite ruling that the school district had, in fact, violated McMillan’s rights, the federal judge who ruled on her case refused to force the district to host the prom because a private, parent sponsored prom was already in the works. The understanding was that McMillen would be invited to that prom.
It looked like it was over. An event was organized for April 2nd at a country club in Fulton, Miss. But when McMillen and her girlfriend arrived they realized that there were only five other students in attendance, two of whom were special needs kids. The school principal and teachers were there to chaperon, but there wasn’t much for them to do.
So where were the other kids? At a private, parent-organized prom that McMillen was not invited to. ”They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them,” McMillen says. “The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to.”
McMillen was deliberately directed to the country club, not the heavily attended private prom, and information about the second event was kept from her. ”It hurts my feelings,” she said. No kidding. It’s hard to even imagine what it would feel like to be 18 and have your all of your classmates and their parents conspiring to leave you out of an event like the prom.
McMillen managed to find a silver lining, however, in the special needs students that attended the her prom. ”They had the time of their lives,” she said. ”That’s the one good thing that came out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].”
