U.S. school suspends students over Vagina Monologues reading

Three girls from a Cross River, N.Y., high school were serving a one-day suspension Wednesday for saying the word "vagina" during a reading of The Vagina Monologues.

The students — Megan Reback, Elan Stahl and Hannah Levinson — used the word Friday evening during a public reading at John Jay High School, a public high school in a New York city suburb.

School principal Richard Leprine said the girls were being punished because they disobeyed an order not to use the word.

It was not appropriate at a community event open to children, he said.

Reback, an honour student, said she and her friends decided to say "vagina" during the feminist play because "it wasn't crude and it wasn't inappropriate and it was very real and very pure."

Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, has jumped to their defence, saying the girls were right for "standing up for art and against censorship."