{"id":980,"date":"2008-04-24T22:16:44","date_gmt":"2008-04-25T05:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2008\/04\/24\/file-under-shameless-reposting\/"},"modified":"2008-04-25T14:10:49","modified_gmt":"2008-04-25T21:10:49","slug":"file-under-shameless-reposting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2008\/04\/24\/file-under-shameless-reposting\/","title":{"rendered":"File under: Shameless reposting of a locally reported story"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article in our local paper just caught my eye: Belmont student’s edgy speech sparks complaints<\/a>, by Louise Dickson. Now we all know that the official paper never<\/em> does what the bloggers do (ow!, where’s my tongue? heck, I think I dislodged it!), and naturally all headlines are to be taken at face value …sure. But as the Times-Colonist<\/em> is not the National Enquirer<\/em>, I had to click through on this one because there had to be some kind of story there.<\/p>\n

Apparently, a smart, creative 17-year old named Brandon Rosario<\/a>, full of all the usual energy that comes with that age, competed at one of our area schools, Belmont High School<\/a>, for the post of class valedictorian. A day later, Brandon Rosario was called to the vice-principal’s office — and yowza, one has to wonder if VPs don’t have enough to do these days.<\/p>\n

His speech had become an object of inquiry: was the boy giving offense? Could someone — anyone? — be offended …by his humour?<\/p>\n

Thank gods for Youtube, because of course his speech is viewable here: Valedictorian Nominee — Brandon Rosario<\/a>, so you can decide for yourself.<\/p>\n

(An aside: I went to see a play called The Violet Hour<\/a> at the Belfry Theatre<\/a> last week; one of its many facets is that it’s about an early 20th century publisher who, together with his assistant, is given books from the future to read — courtesy of a strange machine that arrives uninvited. At some point in the play, the publisher and his assistant begin to “assume” the manners and speech of the future, often stopping themselves self-consciously to wonder, “where did that come from?” The best example is when the assistant gives a little speech about being “offended,” which he announces is the highest form of late 20th-century moral outrage…)<\/p>\n

So Brandon Rosario was called to the vice-principal’s office because …why?<\/p>\n

“As I understand it, [his speech] had racial slurs and some homophobic type of conversation,” Warder said. “And the school is investigating whether or not there needs to be discipline.”<\/p>\n

“Some of it is biting. It’s attacking,” Brandon said. “I don’t think people understand satire these days. But investigating? Like I’m a serial killer or something?”<\/p>\n

In his speech, Brandon tells his classmates he doesn’t have much going for him in pursuit of the valedictorian nomination. [Times-Colonist article<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m guessing the paper printed this good story to stir the pot — there are more people out there than not who will side with Brandon. The question is whether the conversation will do anything to rein in the sort of over-cautiousness exemplified by “managers” or “rulers” of voices-within-the-box.<\/p>\n

Seriously, at this point I think prison<\/a> inmates<\/a> have more rights<\/a> to, and expectation of, free speech than school pupils do — perhaps because it’s at least publicly acknowledged that the former are in jail, while we pretend the latter are free.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Be sure to view the Facebook Group, Support Brandon Rosario’s fight for Free Speech<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article in our local paper just caught my eye: Belmont student’s edgy speech sparks complaints, by Louise Dickson. Now we all know that the official paper never does what the bloggers do (ow!, where’s my tongue? heck, I think I dislodged it!), and naturally all headlines are to be taken at face value …sure. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1652,134,1651,1895,1418],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authenticity","category-education","category-local_not_global","category-times_colonist","category-victoria"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}