There's A Place For Us

"Most Fabulous Story Ever Told"  has certainly stimulated "discussion"

A High School announces a play, adults are insulted, controversy rages: letters to the editor, editorials, the ACLU -- via Bill Newman -- enters the fray, and before the curtain rises folks form picket lines holding signs championing both side of the issue.

Sound familiar?

Well if you're from Amherst, the PC capital of the Happy Valley, all too familiar.  But what I find fascinating is the Amherst Regional High School principal in 1999, Scott Goldman, allowed "West Side Story" to be cancelled because of "racial stereotyping."   Really.

Yes, for the first and only time in history a production of "West Side Story" was censored.  In overly enlightened Amherst, of all places.  Although a few years later it went on without controversy at a high school in nearby Holyoke, which has a much higher Hispanic population.  

Whereas only five years later Amherst became the only high school in the nation to allow teenaged girls to perform "The Vagina Monologues."

But now 14 years later Mr. Goldman, principal of Pioneer Valley Performing Arts charter school, stands firm defending "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told."  I wish he had shown that kind of backbone 14 years ago.

Why is it okay to censor art as "sensitivity" to perceived racism but not to protect against perceived blasphemy?

What high school kid does not like to tweak adults, create controversy, and garner their 15 minutes of fame early in life?  

Of course "art" should stimulate discussion and challenge the status quo, but sometimes it seems high schools pick their plays simply for the side benefit of free advertising brought on by all the controversy.

A generation from now "The Vagina Monologues" and "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told" will be long forgotten.  "West Side Story" however, will still be dancing up a storm. 

Gus Sayer: "Just go. I don't care how. Just go."

So in spite of being a private sector kind of guy, I know how CYA (Cover Your Ass) works.

I too, was guilty a few days ago when I first posted my reaction to the horrific South Hadley suicide by a young Irish immigrant girl, choosing to question why the DA came back so quickly with indictments against the brats involved with bullying teen-ager Phoebe Prince, but taking her sweet time with an incident in Amherst last year where a two-year-old died under the wheels of a school bus, eventually ruled an accident.

Thus demonstrating the Northwestern District Attorney is nothing if not conservative in the careful sense.

But if you are going to indict the pack of juvenile brats who drove young Phoebe Prince to suicide, then why not the paid professional adults who stood by and did nothing? And is sounds like, with Scheibel's use of the term "troubling" for their behavior, that she came pretty damn close.

My self-interested concern is that one persons bullying is another persons banter. And having been on the receiving end of Amherst Town officials trying to have me arrested for suggesting a town official should be removed from office because she no longer lived in town (eventually proven true), or another chief official railing against my "chilling effect" on his governmental board because of my respect for the Open Meeting Law, I'm just a tad sensitive to incidents sending us down that slippery slope to censorship.

Speaking of censorship, Gus Sayer when he was Amherst School Superintendent in 1999 first reacted to the tempest in a teapot about the Amherst Regional High School performing 'West Side Story' and being accused of racism responded unequivocally quick: "No group, neither in the majority nor in the minority, should have the ability to censor the decisions our community’s educators make about what to teach, what to read, or what to produce on the stage."
A few days later he collapsed like a cheaply constructed Chinese school building in an earthquake, allowing the even wimpier High School Principal Scott Goldman to cancel the play--the only time in history such sacrilege would occur.

Two years later Sayer hires Steven Myers as the new principal--at $85,000 annually--to lead the Amherst Regional High School, who at least by physical appearance is gay (Not, as Seinfeld would say, "That there's anything wrong with that."). In the People's Republic of Amherst certainly worth extra credit.

Soon thereafter a mother complained that Meyers propositioned her 15-year-old son, asked him to remove his shirt to expose his breasts, invited him out to a movie, and for a soak in his hot tub.

Superintendent Sayer took the charges seriously enough to hire a lawyer and undertake an investigation of his own, thus he was then duty bound to file a report with the Department of Social Services (G.L.c.119, 51A). He did not--at least not until the news broke and created a firestorm.

Sayer told Myers that if incident became public his Principal job would be “untenable."

This all occurred in January, 2002. Daily Hampshire Gazette digging and Amherst PD uncovered Myers had been under investigation in Colorado for pedophilia and Mass Department of Social Services stepped in and removed his recently adopted 8-year-old boy. Mr Meyers was never charged, disappeared, and has not been heard from since.

Mr Sayer soon "retired" after 14 years as Superintendent of the Amherst Regional High School, but quickly assumed the post at South Hadley High School following in the footsteps of Michael Smith whose brother Dan is still Principal. The 'Good Old Boys' network.

And they rest as they sadly say, "is history." A young girl who immigrated here from from Ireland, after continuous verbal battering, wraps a scarf given to her as a Christmas present by her sister only three weeks earlier around her neck to end the torment the only way she knows how. She was only 15.

At age 67, Gus Sayer is certainly traditional "old school" when it comes to running a publicly funded education empire. Time to head out to pasture. Actually, that time --too late for Phoebe Prince--was a long time ago.

Phoebe speaks

Slate Magazine strongly hints Gus should go

An Irish paper reports

The greater of two evils

What’s worse: Amherst Regional High School’s canceling ‘West Side Story’ or later embracing ‘The Vagina Monologues’?

Four years ago when ARHS became the only high school in the nation to perform ‘VM”, I couldn’t quite decide. Like asking a death row inmate to choose between the electric chair or cyanide gas.

But now that Amherst school officials have allowed adolescents to reprise that feminist manifesto, we have a winner!

In 1999 a 17-year-old Puerto Rican girl collected 158 (out of 1,300) student signatures on a petition decrying the production of ‘West Side Story’ for the annual school play because of ethnic (hers in particular) stereotyping. The School Committee took it a tad too seriously and things went downhill pronto.

Although School Superintendent at the time Gus Sayer showed some backbone with his original memo on the matter: "No group, neither in the majority nor in the minority, should have the ability to censor the decisions our community’s educators make about what to teach, what to read, or what to produce on the stage.”

But bureaucrats can be spineless. Sayer backed off, as he didn’t want to micromanage the High School Principal. and the School Committee did nothing as they didn’t want to micromanage the system.

Six months prior to the ‘West Side Story’ rumble, however, another enterprising 17-year-old activist collected 400 signatures on a petition protesting the policy of restricting students ‘off campus privileges’ during the school day, thus preventing kids from going out for a smoke.

Superintendent Sayer sympathized: “It’s not easy for students who are addicted to refrain from smoking all day”, while also applauding their “activism.”

Izzy Lyman, then co-director of the private Harkness Road High School, said with a sigh, “makes me long for the days when the only rights students had were the right to remain silent.”

To summarize: when the ‘West Side Story’ fiasco started the School Committee deferred to Superintendent Sayer, who deferred to Principal Scott Goldman who deferred to the play’s producers…who caved, saying the controversy had become too “distracting.”

And so Amherst Regional High School became the only entity in history (a record still intact) to cancel a play based on the timeless Shakespearean tragic love story ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

One of the more famous ARHS (1989) graduates Eric Mabius, recently voted “Sexiest man alive” by People Magazine started his career as Paris in ARHS production of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ Luckily he attended our bucolic High School back in the pre-activism days .

At a rally I organized on the Town Common to support ‘West Side Story’ about 100 folks attended, a few high school students, parents--but mostly media. State Senator Stan Rosenberg and ACLU attorney Bill Newman spoke eloquently about free speech and their was much buzz about bringing in a production of the play to the High School with a big-name volunteer cast, but nothing ever came of it.

Fast forward late-December, 2003: When I first read buried in the Amherst Bulletin (who refused to use the word “vagina” in a headline) about senior Kristin Tyler appearing before the School Committee in early-December to inform them (apparently not to ask) about performing ‘VM’, I thought “here we go again with those 17-year-old’s.”

I vividly recall the first school Committee Meeting after the news broke a few weeks later when about two-dozen folks showed up to support the play and only two to oppose.

Although Superintendent Hochman had trumpeted the girls courage to publicly speak out about violence against women he refused to let them come to the School Committee meeting to speak about why they should do it in the form of ‘VM’ because he wanted to shelter them from the brewing controversy. Hmmm.

But a young art teacher, especially supportive of the play, and faculty advisor to it (with a side business of “erotic photography”--specializing in women of course) did appear to read “statements” from the girls.

Immediately the Daily Hampshire Gazette published an editorial citing the strong support at that single School Committee meeting, casting me as a book burner; but then never bothered to issue another editorial after the next three meetings where play opponents far outnumbered supporters.

And the editor-in-chief also forbids me from writing another ‘VM’ column for the Amherst Bulletin, a violation of my verbal contract with editor Nick Grabbe. The same chief editor who accused me of censorship.

(To Be Continued…)