Little bits of history repeating.
While affirming this protest I think it’s also important to amplify and examine the circumstances that have led to it.
Throughout the past year at MacArthur High School, many teachers have been wearing and displaying symbols to indicate their support of LGBTQ students and that their classrooms can be considered a safe space for them.
Without informing the teachers or students first, the administration removed all such symbols from the building. The district then sent a memo to staff reading:
“We want to send a different tone this year. The district’s position is that our responsibility is to make campuses a safe zone for all students, not just in our classrooms, but on every inch of our campus.”
After this statement, several students claim to have been called into the office for conversations in which they were assured they did nothing wrong, although these students noted that each of them had attended meetings of MacArthur’s Gay Straight Alliance. The group’s sponsor, Rachel Stonecipher–the only openly gay teacher at the school — was suddenly removed from her classroom last week and has not returned to work since; neither she nor the administration are commenting on her employment status.
So what we have here is:
1) Public statements declaring an initiative for the public good, followed by
2) targeted interrogation of a social/political minority, and
3) an unexplained disappearance of a prominent member of that minority.
I do not need to spell this out any further. If the allegory were not so present and horrifying it would be something that the school’s history classes could be teaching.
Creative Control 