High school girl fights to establish Caucasian Club

Lisa McClelland has been called a white racist, a fat, white neo-Nazi, KKK girl and a host of obscenity-laced insults since she decided to start a Caucasian Club at her California high school.

A gang of girls threatened to beat her up. Flyers have appeared on campus urging students to boycott her club. A teacher told her in front of the class that he’d rather see her “drugged out and pregnant” than on the news talking about her club.

But Lisa, a 15-year-old freshman at Freedom High School in Oakley, Calif., refuses to give up. Even though she acknowledged that the threats make her nervous, she’s spending this week’s school break drafting a constitution for the proposed club.

“It’s hard, but I’m dealing with it. I’m going to stick it out,” said Lisa in a telephone interview from her home in Contra Costa County, about 50 miles east of San Francisco

Lisa touched off a school and media uproar last month when she began gathering signatures to start a Caucasian Club on campus. The club, which would be open to students of all ethnic backgrounds, would work to promote diversity and help students learn about their heritage, not advance racism, she said.

While many students have supported the idea by signing her petition and offering to join the club, others have compared it to the Ku Klux Klan and accused her of endorsing white supremacy. Lisa, whose ethnicity includes Dutch, German, Italian, American Indian and Latino, acknowledged that the “backlash” has been worse than she expected.

The stream of threats has infuriated her mother, Debi Neely, who has warned school officials that she’ll take legal action if anyone harms her daughter. So far, she said, Principal Eric Volta has dealt promptly with those menacing Lisa.

“I’ve told the principal, and he said that if anything happens to call him immediately,” said Mrs. Neely. “He’s called in a couple of students to talk to them. He took care of it, even though I know he’s not thrilled about the whole club thing.”

Boys have called her names, but it’s the girls who really worry Lisa’s mother. “Girls will walk by and tell her, ‘We’re going to jump [you] after school,’” Mrs. Neely said.

Lisa’s family and friends are sticking close by before and after school, but once she enters the campus, there’s not much they can do, Mrs. Neely said.

“I just worry about her at school. I’ve told her to be careful and stay with her friends, but she said, ‘Mom, if I get jumped, it will be in the hall or during passing period. If it happens, it happens,’” she said.

Dan Smith, superintendent of the Liberty Union High School District, said the school was doing its best to keep Lisa safe.

“We’re concerned if any student doesn’t feel comfortable on one of our campuses,” Mr. Smith said. “We’ll certainly do everything we can to help her.”

As for the “drugged out and pregnant” remark, Mr. Smith said that he hadn’t heard that, but that he considered it “very significant” and that such a comment would not be considered “professional or acceptable.”

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