CHESAPEAKE, Va. — January 19, 2023. That's the date the After School Satan Club plans to launch at a Chesapeake school, the club's campaign director said in a statement on Thursday.
The club, organized by the Satanic Temple & Reason Alliance, has been at the center of heated debate in the Chesapeake community.
Club organizers said this all started when an email promoting the evangelical group known as the Good News Club came to parents from the principal of B.M. Williams Primary School. That's when the club's campaign director, June Everett, said she got a call from a school parent, asking to start an organization, and a facility-use application was submitted. It's first meeting had been scheduled for Dec. 15.
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Not long after, the parent removed their name from the application. Organizers said it was an administrative change, and a Chesapeake resident, who is not a parent, submitted a new application.
On Monday, at the Chesapeake Public Schools Board of Education meeting, parents and community members voiced their opinions about the club. Some believed it could be potentially harmful to children while club organizers said it has nothing to do with Satan, nor do they worship the devil.
Chesapeake Public Schools said in a previously released statement that while it is not a school district-approved club, they “cannot discriminate based on beliefs among groups wishing to rent [their] facilities.”
At the end of the evening, the board decided a safety assessment would determine whether the club would be safe for children.
In a statement released Thursday, Everett said the group would be moving forward with the application.
"The district is not allowing ASSC to move forward with our previously approved and scheduled club launch," Everett said in the statement. "We will be moving forward with our application that Mr. Cotton stated in the CPS BOE is currently complete, and meets all requirements."
Everett said the club will launch on Jan. 19, 2023, which would've been the club's second meeting date initially.
"This should provide ample time for CPS to figure out what it is they are doing here, exactly," Everett said. "I reached out to notify all the parents who signed permission slips for their children to join us today that ASSC would not be taking place, and many responded expressing their frustration and disappointment with the school district."
Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves also released the following statement on Thursday.
"To me, it feels like the school board sought to maximize controversy over this issue — calling a public meeting to discuss ASSC with no clear stated purpose, desperately divulging names of ASSC volunteers — only in an effort to harass and dissuade our local support from installing our club in their school. Now, having created as much controversy as they could, and seeing completely predictable results in the confusion and outrage of people whose misunderstanding of the very nature of after school clubs that the school board has failed to disabuse, they point to the heightened emotions as a problem of ours, one that they would like us to believe justifies denying our club. But it does not. From here, the message seems to be, we're not denying you equal access to a public forum, we are protecting you from what we'll do to you if you if you use the public forum by preventing you from using it."
Lucien Greaves
Satanic Temple co-founder
A notice sent to B.M. Williams parents on Wednesday said the "application is currently pending while a safety assessment is being conducted." No meeting was held on Dec. 15.
