The Booker T. Washington High School community has been grappling with controversy after a poster to promote awareness about bullying and harassment of LGBTQ students was defaced and nearly a dozen students were suspended as a result.
One student recorded another student vandalizing the poster on school property. The images were then posted to a social media website called Phhhoto with the caption including a gay slur, “Don’t tread on me, f-----,” and nine additional students recorded “likes” on the post.
“Booker T. has a pretty long history of being diverse, and (the principal) thought it was important to send a strong message about hate speech and how we’re not going to tolerate it,” said Chris Payne, a spokesman for Tulsa Public Schools.
A group of 20 to 30 students called Sexual Orientation Fellowship Awareness had made posters to promote the national “Day of Silence” on April 17, on which students across the country take a vow of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of bullying and harassment on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth in schools.
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For the vandalism and cyberbullying, one of the two main instigators was suspended for 10 days, while the other was placed on a longer-term suspension.
“He has had a pattern of behavior. There had been other incidents — he had poured water on incoming freshmen who were LGBTQ students,” Payne said. “There were nine additional suspensions (for three days each) for students who went out on social media and said they liked the video. Some people may think that’s kind of harsh, but this is kind of new ground here.”
Brady Henderson, legal director of ACLU Oklahoma, said public schools must strike a careful balance between providing a safe school environment and protecting free speech.
Henderson said it is much more legally defensible to punish students for conduct, including assault and battery on classmates and the vandalism of the poster, than it is to punish students who “liked” a social media post.
“There is very little that would prevent a school from meting out punishment when you’re dealing with conduct with a very direct link to school. It is unlikely for there to be any free speech issues.
“If they did nothing more than comment or ‘like’ a post on social media, there you’ve got much more freedom of speech,” Henderson said. “It is possible the school could overstep its boundaries there … because those students seem to be expressing a particular viewpoint.
“Whether it is the White House or the local school, any time you have part of government, whatever they have to do has to be viewpoint neutral.”
Henderson added that the educators were right to use what happened as a teachable moment to educate students about where their rights end and others’ begin.
Junior Megan Sayler, an officer of the Sexual Orientation Fellowship Awareness club, said she was very satisfied with the school administration’s handling of the matter.
“We have this false sense of security because a lot of the world isn’t as diverse or tolerant as Booker T., so we were kind of shook out of that. We were very shocked and very frightened,” Sayler said.
A social studies teacher, John Waldron, helped organize a conversation Wednesday where students from both sides of the matter were invited.
“This was not part of the discipline process but part of the community process,” Waldron said. “Many of the students on the LGBT side were very upset, and friends of students who received heavy suspensions — some people thought it was disproportionate.
“We wanted the students who had been suspended to have a human face on people who were offended, and we wanted the students who were offended by this to have a voice.
“Our purpose wasn’t to take a position or to moralize in any way,” Waldron said. “We just wanted to try to restore respect. We’re all Hornets (the school’s mascot), and we need to respect each other.”
Sayler said three of the suspended students, including the two instigators, attended the voluntary meeting and that all three seemed genuinely sorry.
“They apologized, because I don’t think beforehand they understood the connotation those words have for us. They understood that their actions had consequences,” she said.
“These people are people, too. They may have made a bad decision, but that doesn’t make them bad people,” Salyer continued. “That’s something that Booker T. instills in us. We know how to treat each other with kindness and respect, and we know how to move forward.”
She added that her organization is one of the oldest gay-straight student alliances in Oklahoma and that having a group of both LGBTQ members and supportive, straight members is very helpful for teens struggling with sexuality or gender identity issues and related family conflicts.
“I had never seen another school like this where students lean on each other so much for support. We took this to the administration, and they handled it very well,” Sayler said.
“No matter your personal beliefs or opinions, you should never infringe on someone else’s rights. Especially at Booker T., a school so known for being diverse. I don’t ever want to see that image taken away from us, because it is something we all hold so dear.”
