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“If she can’t go to my prom, then that prom is not worth going to.”
17-year-old Paula Goodgame and her girlfriend, Anjali Persad, have been dating for about four months. Like many high school students, they have been busy preparing for one of the biggest events of any student’s high school career — prom night.
Goodgame, a junior this year, is a recent transfer student to St. Petersburg Catholic School in St. Petersburg, Florida, while her girlfriend attends a nearby private school.
But on Wednesday, the Florida student tweeted out some bad news. She had discovered she wouldn’t be allowed to take her girlfriend to the big dance as her date, according to an email she received from her school guidance counselor.
Goodgame originally reached out to a teacher via email after a student warned her she wouldn't be able to bring her girlfriend as a date. The Catholic school's official posted prom guidelines state that “escorts must be of the opposite gender,” but Goodgame — as a relatively new student — was not aware of this rule.
In her email, provided to BuzzFeed News, she reached out for confirmation from one of her teachers.
“I just transferred here and I don't exactly have too many friends, and that added on with the social anxiety of prom makes me feel like prom would be awkward for me. Because of that and news I heard from my friend, I was asking for confirmation if I could bring my girlfriend to prom. That way I could have a familiar face in the crowd and be with my date.”
When the teacher didn't respond, she then emailed her guidance counselor.
Goodgame shared a screenshot of the counselor’s email response along with a photo of herself and her girlfriend. “It’s not like we already bought what we were gonna wear or anything,” she wrote.
“I took the response as a huge surprise because of how rude it was,” she said of the email. “Especially because it was coming from someone I'm supposed to confide in.”
BuzzFeed News has reached out to the school for comment regarding the prom date policy.
Her story quickly caught people's attention. Goodgame's tweet has been shared well over 3,000 times since being posted on Wednesday.
@paula_goodgame
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