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High School Student’s Speech About Campus Sexual Assault Gets Widespread Attention After School Cuts Her Mic
It’s that time of year when kids are graduating from high school, and the age old tradition of the valedictorian speech is happening all around the country. While exciting for the kids, families and other students, these kinds of speeches are generally pretty quickly forgotten and certainly tend not to make the national news. However, in nearby Petaluma, California, something different is happening, all because a bunch of spineless school administration officials freaked out that the valedictorian, Lulabel Seitz, wanted to discuss sexual assault. During her speech, the school cut her mic when she started talking about that issue (right after talking about how the whole community had worked together and fought through lots of adversity, including the local fires that ravaged the area a few months back). Seitz has since posted the video of both her mic being cut off and then with her being filmed giving the entire speech directly to a camera.
And, of course, now that speech — and the spineless jackasses who cut the mic — are getting national news coverage. The story of her speech and the mic being cut has been on NPR, CBS, ABC, CNN, Time, the NY Post, the Washington Post and many, many more.
In the ABC story, she explains that they told her she wasn’t allowed to “go off script” (even pulling out of a final exam to tell her they heard rumors she was going to go off speech and that she wasn’t allowed to say anything negative about the school) and that’s why the mic was cut, even as the school didn’t know what she was going to say. She also notes — correctly — that it was a pretty scary thing for her to continue to go through with the speech she wanted to give, despite being warned (for what it’s worth, decades ago, when I was in high school, I ended up in two slightly similar situations, with the administration demanding I edit things I was presenting — in one case I caved and in one I didn’t — and to this day I regret caving). Indeed, she deserves incredible kudos for still agreeing to give her speech, and it’s great to see the Streisand Effect make so many more people aware of (1) her speech and (2) what a bunch of awful people the administrators at her school are for shutting her speech down.
As for the various administrators, their defense of this action is ridiculous. They’re quoted in a few places, but let’s take the one from the Washington Post:
“In Lulabel’s case, her approved speech didn’t include any reference to an assault,” [Principal David Stirrat] said. “We certainly would have considered such an addition, provided no individuals were named or defamed.”
As Seitz notes, she never intended to name names, and the school had told her so many times not to talk about these things it was obvious to her that she wouldn’t have been able to give that speech if she had submitted the full version. In the ABC interview she explained that rather than just letting the valedictorian speak as normal, the school had actually told her she had to “apply” to speak.
Dave Rose, an assistant superintendent, told the Press Democrat that he could remember only one other time that administrators had disconnected a microphone during a student’s graduation speech in the past seven years, but said he believed it was legal.
“If the school is providing the forum, then the school has the ability to have some control over the message,” Rose said.
Actually, that’s not how the First Amendment works. Schools can limit some things, but not if it’s based on the content of the message, which appears to be the case here. Of course, I doubt that Seitz is going to go to court over this as it’s not worth it, but thanks to the Streisand Effect, she doesn’t need to. The world has learned about her speech… and about how ridiculous the administrators are in her school district.
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Congressman’s Office Gets High School Student Suspended For Expressing His Displeasure With Congress
The debate over gun control has reached new heights following the shooting at a high school in Florida. Every mass shooting prompts debate over the Second Amendment and access to guns, but this one, led by students whose classmates were killed, has more momentum than most.
Youth is wasted on the young, people say, as they note the steady decline in voter participation in younger demographics. This seems to imply more students should be involved in social and political issues, but this particular participation has been met with lots of ridicule and anger. In other words, it’s been greeted with hypocrisy, which is pretty much what we expect in heated political debates.
Nothing is more heated than the gun control debate. And everyone with an opinion is wrong. But it’s the youth that are the wrongest, and those bemoaning youthful antipathy aren’t responding very well to this sudden display of activism. Gun control-related walkouts have occurred in schools all over the nation, and students expressing their displeasure with their representatives are finding out firsthand how thin-skinned their representatives are.
A student at a Nevada high school has been punished by his school for comments he made to a Congressman’s office during a personal phone call.
[Noah] Christiansen told the Washington Post that during the walkout, his classmates passed around pieces of paper with phone numbers of legislators to call. Christiansen called the office of Rep. Mark Amodei, a pro-gun Republican, to complain, and reached a staffer in his office.
He told the Post that he said, “I believe bump stocks should be banned, the minimum age should be raised, and Congress people not already asking should get off their fucking asses and do something about gun control.”
Heated topic. Heated words. We’re all adults here, except for the student being punished by adults. Rep. Amodei’s office called the student’s school to complain about his use of the F-word. That should have been the end of it, and the only punishment handed out should have been public mockery of Rep. Amodei and his overly-sensitive staffers.
Of course, that’s not what happened. Christensen’s school responded by suspending him for “disrespectful behavior/language.” That’s just stupid. This language didn’t target the school, its staff, or fellow students. It targeted Congress in general, which is not exactly known for getting off its fucking ass and checking things off its To Do list.
No one except Christiansen comes out of this situation looking good. Rep. Amodei certainly doesn’t. Despite the ACLU’s advocacy on behalf of the wronged student, Amodei is sticking to his unapologetic guns.
Amodei defended his staffer and said no apology is necessary. The congressman said the situation was not a matter of shutting down the student’s First Amendment rights.
“I’m not apologizing because my guy accurately described what happened in the phone call,” he said.
In other words, this isn’t on me or my staffers. This is on the school because it chose to react this way to a completely unnecessary, completely retaliatory phone call made by a staffer who felt he didn’t need to put up with angry, sweary teens. But Amodei’s non-apology gets even worse. He also claims his office is in the right because it didn’t request a small parade of horribles to be inflicted on the student.
“He related the guy was vulgar,” Amodei said in a brief interview Monday. “He didn’t ask [the school] for any specific thing or beat the kid up. He just said ‘I wanted you know that this guy was really vulgar. We had a lot of calls and nobody else was,’ and that was it.”
Well, Amodei likes to dish it out but he sure can’t take it. He used plenty of vulgar language to describe his interactions with the Bureau of Land Management, according to audio obtained by USA Today.
“While I think the world of Mr. Ruhs, I’m not going to try and get between him and your deputy guy, whatever is going on with those two,” Amodei said he told Zinke. “With all due respect, I’ve been to enough rodeos to sense an issue there and let’s just move on.
“Nevada has suffered through a decade of s— BLM leadership,” he continued. “To put a strong successful leader in there for a net 18 months and then, for any reason, ship him, or let him leave to a position in Boise, is absolutely tone deaf.”
Northern Nevada’s lone congressman went on to decry “bulls—” legal provisions he said were cited by a Zinke subordinate in explaining why Amodei wasn’t told of Ruhs’ departure. That explanation, he felt, amounted to Zinke’s office indirectly telling him to “eat s—” over the incident.
That is awful. And to hear it coming from a respected pillar of the political community? It’s almost too much to bear. Someone should probably inform his office that Amodei is running around being “really vulgar.” Staffers shouldn’t be asked to beat up Amodei, probably. That would just make complainants sound as stupid as the Congressman. But his frequent vulgarity, aimed at prominent people in positions of great responsibility, shouldn’t go unnoticed. Neither should he and his office’s hypocrisy on the subject of vulgarities and who’s allowed to use them.
Amodei claims his office’s retaliatory act was meant to show the student words have consequences. They do. And Amodei is hopefully learning quickly that those in power are not immune from the consequences.
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