Community speaks out on censorship

By Lauren Heaton

Yellow Springs High School students spoke openly and full of emotion as they described to the school board last Thursday night what the freedom of artistic expression means to them. It means having an opportunity unique to Yellow Springs. It means exercising their rights and discovering themselves as thinkers with something to contribute to community. It means feeling “respected,” “safe,” and “empowered.”

For two hours school board members and school administrators listened to a crowd of over 60 students, parents and residents who came to the board’s regular meeting Feb. 14 to oppose the censorship of the YSHS one-act plays put on the previous weekend. Attendees came also to find out what had prompted the change in theater policy and to dialogue about how to right a situation that had gone so wrong, many said.

But the panel of officials in attendance had not come to speak or dialogue. Board President Aida Merhemic, who chaired the meeting, established at the start of the meeting that the board welcomed statements only, would not answer questions, and would not accept comments directed at anyone other than the board chair. The board had come to hear what the community had to say, she said.

At issue was YSHS senior Peter Keahey’s one-act play, “Cat Calls,” about construction workers who get hexed because of their vulgar treatment of women. YSHS Principal John Gudgel and superintendent Norm Glismann jointly censored the play the day it was scheduled to be performed on Feb. 8 due to what they perceived as inappropriate sexual content. Keahey and the play’s cast chose not to perform the play and instead read a statement about the dangers of censorship at the one-act plays performance. But many parents and community members still felt strongly that the school handled the situation unjustly, and should provide an explanation for what they perceived to be a sudden change in school policy.

Since Thursday’s meeting, the school had not yet formulated a response to the repeated requests on Thursday night to begin a dialogue about what is appropriate for YSHS theater, according to school board President Aida Merhemic on Monday. But YSHS Principal John Gudgel said on Tuesday that school leaders do plan to initiate a process involving representatives from the study body, school faculty, the Yellow Springs Theater Arts Association and the community aimed at addressing the issues that have been raised.

Students speak out
Sometimes calm and stoic, sometimes crying and pausing for breath, nine high school students spoke on Thursday night about what they felt was right with their theater experience and wrong with the censorship of their work. The students also had questions about how such a major misunderstanding over a long-standing tradition such as the one acts could have occurred.

According to senior Meg Hild, students “pour their thoughts and lives” into the one acts, sometimes spending months writing them. Changing a writer’s work “is theft of time, effort and creative energy,” she said. “Don’t stifle the chance for students to fully discover their artistic selves.”

Theater and one-act participants tend to be honor roll and National Honor Society students who conform to school life in every other way and simply need and deserve the one outlet where they get to be themselves, junior Laura Hyde said. The freedom Yellow Springs offered former YSHS student and theater participant Liz Zaff stands in great contrast to the Beavercreek High School she now attends, she said, and made her who she is.

The school based its decision to censor the play on the student handbook, which forbids students to engage in sexual harassment and improper sexual behavior, to use abusive language or wear clothing with sexual connotation. Following that logic, senior John Hempfling asked if he would have received a detention for writing a play about cursing in the halls, or cutting class, or putting graffiti on the walls. The process by which students edit each other’s work and lean on the guidance of the coordinator worked fine in the past and should continue to govern the one acts, without censorship from the administration, he said.

Senior Anna Forster sought information and transparency about the poor communication between authority figures and students that led to what she called an atmosphere of “threat and chaos.” Home-schooled student Rose Pelzl, who participates in YSHS theater, said the students should have been told well ahead of time what the theatrical standards were and what the consequences for non-compliance would be. And if community leaders are threatening the freedom Amelia Tarpey was told was unique to Yellow Springs, Tarpey said, she wanted to be part of that discussion. Miriam Barcus agreed.

“Freedom of voice is the one most important thing we’ve been given, and taking that away is taking away respect for the students, and I don’t think that that’s the place we want to be,” Barcus said.

Schools disappoint community
Parent Debra Wilburn was deeply troubled by what she saw as a lack of process, a lack of advocacy for Keahey, and a lack of preemptive dialogue. The “unilateral action polarized” the community, she said Thursday night.

As a parent, volunteer, and concerned citizen, Carol Allin said she felt “betrayed” by a force that she felt was limiting students’ opportunity to create and express emotion through theater.

“The theater program has always been about empowerment of youth here,” she said. It’s okay if not everyone likes every play, she said, because the point is that their creators “need opportunities to fly and fail...and they don’t need the rug pulled out from under them.”

Youth in Yellow Springs do have a safe space to speak out and have trusted the community enough to “show parts of their souls,” theater volunteer Ali Thomas said. “But trust is really fragile,” she said. “And as soon as you say ‘you may want to say it, but I don’t want to hear it,’ the dialogue stops and you lose that trust.” After that, there may not be another chance, she said.

But as a parent, Anita Brown counts on her right as a parent to be the best judge of what is appropriate for her children at different developmental stages. “As parents, we are censors,” she said. “And I feel we should have the right as parents to censor what [our] children see and experience.”

Suggestions for next steps
Many community members had ideas about how to move forward and create a process for establishing guidelines for the theater that the whole community abides.

With such diversity, Yellow Springs has depended on tolerance and respect for others’ perspectives to remain a united community, Theresa Mayer said. Instead of censoring the one acts, she challenged the school board to find a more “creative, positive, win-win way” to respond to the community’s “different but equally valid points of view.”

According to parent Martha Hild, two things were preventing forward movement on the issue. First, the school board needs to provide valid reasons to change the way the one acts have always been managed and make the new goals open to public scrutiny, she said. Second, the community needs to bridge the large gulf between the school administration and the community by dialoguing about the nature of artistic endeavor and how to apply it to high schoolers.

“School leaders need the community’s leadership in order to be successful here,” Hild said.

McKinney School teacher Aurelia Blake and YSHS teacher Kathy Burkland advocated for the students’ leadership in deciding what is appropriate for this dramatic forum, which is by rights, theirs. Blake urged the school to institute a process by which the students critique each other’s work so that instead of censorship they would get a learning process.

Mary Beth Burkholder also suggested that in order for the school to develop guidelines of propriety, school officials needed to first be familiar with the material, i.e. see “Cat Calls,” to understand the sensibilities of local theater goers.

“We put our trust in the students and in the adults who work with the students, and for 17 years they’ve been worthy of that trust,” David Hyde said.

Elder community members Walt Tulecke and Carl Hyde both expressed tearful pride in the students and in the community that raised them.

“I came to Saturday’s performance, and I went home with a lump in my throat because I was so proud to be in this community,” Carl Hyde said. “It was terribly moving to me how those students rose up with dignity and skill and maturity, and I was proud to be in Yellow Springs.”

Contact: lheaton@ynsews.com