Not content to let educators dictate who should hear their music, the lesbian folk-rock group Indigo Girls have rescheduled a free concert for Columbia, S.C., students on Thursday in direct response to the cancellation of a gig previously planned for their school.

The show, which was scheduled to take place at Irmo High School in Irmo, S.C., was canceled by the school's principal after the surrounding community complained that the Grammy-winning duo are lesbians. That cancellation was followed by another at a high school in Tennessee.

Instead of playing at Irmo High School on Thursday, singer/guitarists Amy Ray and Emily Saliers will play the 3,000-capacity Richland Township Auditorium in Columbia at 8 p.m. According to Epic Records publicist Lisa Markowitz, 2,000 of those tickets have been set aside for people who show up with a valid student-identification card while the remaining seats will be available to the general public for $15.

Tickets for the event were made available to students and the public on Saturday, which was also the same day that many students were taking their Standardized Aptitude Test college-entrance exams. While he couldn't give out exact numbers, Richland Township Auditorium spokesperson Andre Holloman said Monday that there were plenty of tickets left for the event. "The floor is just about filled up," he said, "so we're mostly looking at balcony seats now."

Asked to give an estimate on the number of tickets left, Holloman said there were "probably 900 tickets left for both students and the public."

The Indigo Girls have been playing high schools and universities over the past month as a warm-up for their appearances on this year's edition of the popular all-women Lilith Fair and as a way to reach out to their younger fans in a smaller setting. Their Thursday show at Irmo High School, one of five shows that had been slated for this week, was canceled by Principal Gerald Witt following complaints from parents and students concerning the Indigo Girls' homosexuality and following parents' concerns about the group holding a concert during a school assembly.

A show scheduled to take place Tuesday at Germantown, Tenn.'s Germantown High School was also canceled after the principal there said he learned that the group used an obscenity onstage during a performance at the show's first stop, at Loganville High School in Loganville, Ga., on April 13. The song in question, "Shame On You" (RealAudio excerpt), is from their Shaming Of The Sun album and includes the line: "Me and Jesus, we're of the same heart/ the only thing that keeps us distant is that I keep fucking up."

When news of the Irmo cancellation broke, Saliers issued a statement condemning the act and vowing to play a show in Columbia that same day. "We are saddened and angry to hear that our show at Irmo High School has been canceled," Saliers said. "It is a blatant case of homophobia. The show was canceled because we are gay."

Hootie & the Blowfish drummer Jim Sonefeld and guitarist Mark Bryan each wrote letters to the Columbia, S.C., newspaper The State on Sunday that condemned the show's cancellation and the negative light it sheds on the South. "In this case, two respected, nationally prominent artists -- the Indigo Girls ... offered a day of their precious time to entertain and educate," Sonefeld wrote, "only to be canceled because of the fear and ignorance of a small group of people."

Bryan's letter was even more direct. "They don't parade around singing the virtues of homosexuality or try to coax the youth of America into a gay lifestyle," he wrote. "This [school's] decision was naive and wrong."

Bryan and Sonefeld are not alone in their anger over the decision. Jane Rish, spokeswoman for School District 5 Board of Education, which is home to the 1,800-student Irmo High, said flyers are being distributed stating that a student walk-out will occur at 8:45 a.m. on Thursday, the day the Indigo Girls were scheduled to play.

"It's likely that there will be disciplinary action taken if the students involved take this action to the extreme," Rish said. "The principal hasn't decided yet what that will be, but if it only is a few people for a short period of time, it might not be a big deal."