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An Interesting Run-of-the-mill Free Speech Case |
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This looks like a classic free speech issue to me, quite honestly nothing new or particularly exciting. Three high school girls were told not to use the word “vagina” in a reading from The Vagina Monologues at a school “open-mic night”. According to the press release, “After being advised by [John Jay High School] Assistant Principal Lisa Kor and Director of Humanities Gilbert Cass not to use the word, the girls decided to do so anyway.” They were promptly suspended.
The story got picked up by some major news sources, including the New York Times (free registration required), where the girls defended their views and their speech:
“We want to make it clear that we didn’t do this to be defiant of the school administration,†said Megan Reback, one of the three girls, who all received one-day suspensions for using the word during a reading of “The Vagina Monologues†at the forum last Friday. “We did it because we believe in the word vagina, and because we believe it’s not a bad word. It shouldn’t be a word that is ever censored, and the way in which we used it was respectable.â€
Seems normal, if disheartening, to me. This kind of thing happens all the time. Except I went to that high school and I had a similar brush with censorship while I was a student.
John Jay is by any measure one of the more privileged high schools in the country. My parents moved into the district when I was in the 3rd grade specifically because of the quality of the schools. John Jay has a history of being somewhat tough with us students, perhaps because school administrators were trying to hold us to the higher standards they thought were expected by our parents. The above mentioned Lisa Kor, then the Dean of Students, was always pestering me and my friends about their shoddy attendance and making sure we were punished with a vengeance when we cut class. We called her the “attendance Nazi”. I also remember performing in a band in the annual Variety Show with a couple of friends. We were planning on singing the teenage favorite Beer by Reel Big Fish. (I loved that stuff in high school!) The lyrics aren’t particularly scandalous, but they certainly revolve around drinking:
If I get drunk well
I’ll pass out on the floor now baby,
You won’t bother me no more,
And if you’re drinkin’ well
You know that you’re my friend
And I say I think I’ll have myself a beer.
And really, the way we sang it there is no way anyone could understand any of the words anyway!
After playing at a rehearsal before the show we were told by Gilbert Cass not to perform the song. He cited the same reason as was given to these three girls, that there may be young children in the audience and our performance was therefore inappropriate. We performed the song anyway, and Gil, with satisfaction, closed the curtain on us in the middle of our show. I still to this day disagree that a song about drinking will have any greater consequences than a few bars hummed in the car on the way home.
The administration’s reasoning holds even less weight in this circumstance. In this school district we had our first round of school sponsored sex education in 5th grade! Any kid older than 10 in the audience that night already knew what “vagina” meant. On top of that, vagina isn’t even a curse word, it is really more anatomical. I could explain its meaning to any 5 year old without embarrassment. It’s easy! “You know how you have a penis/vagina between your legs? Well, mommy/daddy has a vagina/penis. That’s part of what makes him/her a man/woman.”
The point isn’t that these girls disobeyed a direct order, as was argued by the school administrators, but that the order was given in the first place. I’m happy to see that in their zeal to protect the virgin ears of the young children that may or may not have been in attendance, the leaders at John Jay have created something of a media firestorm, at least by my small town’s standards. Apparently t-shirts and posters were made proclaiming “Vagina Pride”, The Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler (who lives close by) supported the girls as “Vagina Warriors”, and the numerous news broadcasts and press coverage have granted the girls a reprieve of their sentences, at least for now. Hopefully this controversy will cause all the administrators involved to question their role in shaping lives. To me it seems it is much more damaging to a young mind to be told they can’t express themselves in the way they choose than for another young mind to hear a reference to drinking or the word vagina. For a school that aspires to “expand the cognitive, affective and social abilities of students” in the words of Principal Richard Leprine, he doesn’t seem to be doing much to actively encourage thought provoking discussion, something which The Vagina Monologues certainly tries to do.
However this story ends, I feel somewhat vindicated. Even though my poor cover band’s fight for free speech passed into ancient history without such press coverage, I’m glad someone is finally holding John Jay accountable for their censorship. If you’d like to lend your support or let my former high school know what you think about this mess, the district’s phone number is 914-763-7000 and Richard Leprine, Lisa Kor, and Gilbert Cass’s email addresses are available from this page.
Finally, to keep things on a more personal note, have any of those reading this article had a personal experience with censorship? Please share in the comments below.
It is ridiculous that someone would seek to censor the word vagina, especially when its use is not overtly vulgar or disrespectful. That sexuality still makes people so uncomfortable, still remains taboo to talk about, helps explain the ridiculous beliefs that people still espouse. Keeping something out of open dialogue makes discrimination against things like homosexuality more likely.
Im also picturing the administrators squirming at some high school girls saying the word vagina. No doubt they sought to ban it cause it made them uncomfortable to some degree. To hide behind “protecting the children” is just sorry.
I’m not so sure about all of this.
Yes, I agree that the censorship is unfair, and maybe the school shouldn’t have told the girls not to use the word, but at the same time, as a former student of this particular high school, I know that the administration includes a clause in their little ‘handbook of rules’ negating a student’s complete first amendment rights while on school grounds. By becoming a student at that school, ones agrees to said censorship. So, as stupid and short-sighted it was for the administration to censor the word, it was in their rights to do so.
That being said, I don’t think the girls did this to ‘protest’ or because they ‘believe in the word vagina.’ That’s just ridiculous. It seems to me that they were trying to start up a ruckus, and it looks like they succeeded.
Well, that’s the fun thing about rights, the are inalienable. You can’t sign them away. It gets more complicated when you are dealing with minors, but these girls are 16. Either way, even if it was legal it doesn’t mean it was right. These lovely administrators are certainly experiencing first hand what can happen if you deny free speech, even if it is technically legal.