Otter Valley Union High Faces Fight Over Diversity Week
School Board Caves To Pressure to Require Anti-Gay Speaker

        In what has become an increasingly common scenario, a diversity week planning committee made up of students has been overruled by an outsider community group of adults objecting to the inclusion of a presentation by Outright Vermont Director BJ Rogers. The site this time was Otter Valley Union High School, in the Rutland Northwest District, drawing students from Brandon, Forestdale, Pittsford, Whiting, Sudbury, and Goshen.
     Two weeks before the scheduled event, school counselor Jen Amsbury, who was advising the student planning group, sent the schedule to parents and school board members, Rogers recalled.
     According to Otter Valley Union Principal Gary Taber, “The concern [about the Outright presentation] came from a group of adults, few of whom actually had any students here. They expressed their terrible concerns for the children. I tried to get them to understand that the message for the week was to create a safe and respectful environment for our students and staff and faculty. When they said they wanted to make sure the ‘other side’ was presented, I asked them to define the ‘other side.’ They weren’t able to do so.”
     Taber said that the group, with leadership from the “Center for American Cultural Renewal,” pressured enough members of the school board that the adults issued an ultimatum to the students that they must include a speaker from the “ex-gay” community.
     The “Center for American Cultural Renewal” sent a packet of 11 pages to the principal and the school board, including a 6-page letter signed by group president Stephen Cable and vice president Judith Sargent and 13 others identified as Otter Valley School District parents. Cable and Sargent are also president and vice president of the Rutland-based civil unions backlash group “Who Would Have Thought.” The letterhead for the Center for American Cultural Renewal lists an email address at Who Would Have Thought, and uses the same phone number as Who Would Have Thought.
     “The first five pages are a letter from Sargent and Cable, making false claims about Outright and maligning us,” said Rogers. “From there they go on to publish materials from the Gay Men’s Health Crisis that were distributed by Health Department, safe sex guidelines, the OITM logo from the March issue, and a page that spliced together a Curbside cartoon, the photo of Don Eggert and Mike Bensel from the Drag Ball, and the Yolanda photo [with inflatable phallus].”
     Taber said he worked with a parent from the objecting group to find a speaker who would be acceptable to the adults to present “the other side.” Finally, Mark Williams, a man Taber said “claims to be a former homosexual who converted and counsels people in that respect” agreed to come and speak at the high school. “That was not anything to do with our topic,” Taber argued. “We weren’t trying to promote homosexuality or Hinduism or being black. Converting people was not the topic,” Taber concluded. “Respect for difference was and is.”
     According to the principal, two or three students attended Williams’ presentation about conversion and “reparative” therapy. He and the students “tried to convert his remarks to suggesting that harassment was not okay.”
     A few days later, Rogers made his presentation on behalf of Outright Vermont to about 10 students, an equal number of parents and community members, and 10 to 15 faculty and staff. “I just made it clear that this was about the students. There were some questions directed in a way to encourage confrontation, but there was no picketing. Stephen Cable came up to me afterward with a big smile, shook my hand and told me how much he enjoyed it,” Rogers recalled.
     “In the end my major problem was less about them providing the ‘other side’ than about the fact this was a youth event, planned, organized, sponsored, put together, then at the last minute, adults issue ultimatums that disregard all of the students’ work,” Rogers explained. “The week of programming was sponsored by the gay-straight alliance, the honor society and the student council. The action taken by the adults was homophobic, that’s become predictable. But it is incredibly ageist for adults to step in at the eleventh hour. Their treatment of students and nonthinking, nonempowered entities is still surprising.”
     Taber said in an interview that he was impressed by Rogers’s presentation, calling it “One of the most eloquent talks I’ve ever heard, the kind of thing I’d like to hear from a pulpit.” He went on to characterize the talk as being about “getting along, respect, creating a safe space. You could never say it was about proselytizing, but to be kind to each other.”
     Principal Gary Taber is in his seventh year leading the Otter Valley Union High School, coming from Maryland. “I’ve really been pushing the concept of civility, treating students with respect. Even when you’re really angry you can still treat people respectfully,” he said.
     Taber quoted a statement that appears on the back of the student handbook and on documents sent home with students: “A school climate that recognizes and values the inherent dignity of each individual is everyone’s right. Creating such a climate is everyone’s responsibility.”
     Because of the push for civility, he said, “In the 7 years I’ve been here, I can see a change in the climate of the school.”
     Despite the confrontation with the school board, Taber does not anticipate any lingering fallout, although he noted wryly that he hasn’t yet signed a contract for next year.