By David Delcore
[email protected]
EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. — Separate student groups at U-32 Middle and High School are pushing a pair of policies — one that would make “condoms, dental dams and lubricants” readily available to students and another that would ban “hate symbols” on campus.
Members of the School Board’s policy committee received back-to-back presentations on the two proposals during their Tuesday meeting and have taken both under advisement.
The committee agreed one of the proposals will require significant parental engagement, while the other would force them to stop and think seriously about the First Amendment.
Students, and their faculty advisors, didn’t dispute the potentially sensitive nature of the proposals, but argued their respective goals — “healthy kids” and “a safe learning environment” — demanded action.
Members of the student group “Are You Into It?” pitched their no-cost plan to make contraceptives free to all students who attend the grade 7-12 school.
Citing results from the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is conducted every other year by the state, juniors Bailey Morse and Iona Bristol told the committee nearly a third of the U-32 respondents reported having intercourse in the three months preceding the survey and only half of them used condoms.
Concerned about the potential for sexually transmitted infections, Morse and Bristol made the case for leveraging Planned Parenthood of Northern New England’s offer to provide the contraceptives to the school at no cost. If that offer were ever rescinded, they said, other sources of funding in the community would be used to continue the program.
“It will have an impact,” Bristol predicted.
Advisor Meg Falby, a health teacher, said the student group was sensitive to the potential for “push-back” involving taxpayer financing and was committed to a program that wouldn’t cost the school, or the students, anything.
“This is a touchy enough subject for folks even in a liberal-progressive community,” she said.
According to Falby, more than a dozen other Vermont high schools have similar programs, but she said U-32 might be one of the first that has students ranging from seventh graders to seniors.
Falby said that might be cause for pause for some parents, but told the committee statistically it shouldn’t be. There is no evidence, she said, that indicates students that are not sexually active alter their behavior because of the availability of contraceptives.
However, Falby said there is evidence that suggests sexually active students increase their use of contraceptives if they are easily available.
“The only thing we want is healthy happy children,” she said.
Committee Chairman Chris McVeigh said the policy probably warranted active outreach to parents before any recommendation is made.
“This has the potential to be a big deal,” he said, suggesting spreading the word and soliciting input in advance would be prudent.
Falby agreed, offering to host an after school forum and explore other ways of spreading the word.
“I want parents to come out,” she said. “I want parents to talk about it (safe sex) because I think folks are living in silos and we get bogged down in life.”
Hate symbol ban
Members of the group “Seeking Social Justice” presented the committee with a draft policy that would forbid: “… the display, transmission, or dissemination by any means, in a non-educational context, of any hate symbol(s) … regardless of the stated intent of the individual displaying said symbol.”
Committee members were told the perceived need for the policy stemmed from one student’s decision to display the Confederate flag and a “Blue Lives Matter” flag from a school bus on the same day the “Black Lives Matter” flag was raised on the school campus. That act, the committee was told, sparked a discussion of hate symbols and a heightened sensitivity to them.
What started as a proposal to ban the Confederate flag, which has been spotted with some frequency on clothing, screen savers and profile pictures, was broadened to include “hate symbols.” That term, as defined in the draft policy means: “… any symbol which either exists to provoke or express racial hatred, violence, white supremacist ideologies, or similarly incendiary and hateful sentiment towards any other group or groups, or which is commonly used for the previously stated purpose, or which is used by an individual for the previously stated purpose.”
Bruce Pandya said he and other students in the group considered the constitutional questions about freedom of speech it might raise.
“We agreed that the school’s ability to … forecast and prevent unsafe learning environments would allow for (the proposed prohibition),” he said.
Meg Allison, the school librarian and the group’s advisor, agreed, urging the committee to adopt a policy that is “… intolerant of symbols that are divisive and exclusive.”
“Any sort of symbol that makes students feel unsafe, unseen, unwelcome, we have to ask ourselves, ‘are we going to tolerate that?’” she said.
McVeigh said he was wrestling with the First Amendment issues and concerned about who would determine what qualifies as a “hateful symbol,” based on the “fairly broad” language reflected in the draft policy.
“How are we going to publicize it so folks know where the line is?” he asked.
That could be tricky, according to Pandya, who noted the list of “hate symbols” is both long and evolving.
“There’s no way to list every single hate symbol and make sure everybody recognizes them as being hate symbols,” he said.
Allison agreed, suggesting the board could defer to an extensive database compiled and updated by the Anti-Defamation League.
The committee didn’t consult that list at Tuesday’s meeting, but, based on its contents and the proposed policy, a student wearing a Tom Brady jersey to school would arguably be in violation. The number 12 is a hate symbol. So are 13, 14, 18, 83, and 88.
Allison told the committee the “OK” hand gesture was recently added to the ADL’s database, which includes symbols ranging from burning crosses to Swastikas.
Though Pandya said the proposed policy could be “enforced with discretion,” he argued its adoption was important to a group that is interested in fostering a “culture shift” at U-32.
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