Avon High School Interim Principal’s Email.
Here’s what the interim principal Timothy Breslin of Avon High School sent by mistake to parents of students last week after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. The Courant has more on the convoluted story.
Yesterday throughout the day, I heard that a small number of students made comments in the aftermath of the victory of Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election that some of you might have found unusually inappropriate or bigoted, or even threatening. If any of this happened, I am deeply sorry.
As citizens of the United States, we will of course honor the outcome of the election. As you know, this is one of our most sacredly held democratic values. And another value, just as sacred, is that we do not tolerate bigotry. Bigotry is not a democratic value. And as I am sure you understand, your teachers, tutors, custodians, cafeteria workers, and every other adult in our school, and I will not tolerate it. Needless to say, you as students of this fine high school should not tolerate it either.
Please understand that there is always room for disagreement, particularly with respect to matters of governance and politics. As you know from your history, our country has experienced far more intense disagreements than this one. And as you also know from your history, we have survived and in many instances grown stronger as a nation when these arguments have been settled. So now we are in a moment of deep disagreement in our nation, and there are many things to disagree on. But let us not disagree on this:
Bigotry is not a democratic value and, as such, it will not be tolerated in our school. Rather, our great democratic value is our tolerance of each other and our occasional differences. Not only will we honor the results of the election, we will honor each other in our understanding of and care for each other. We will stand by each other. We will stand by our Muslim families. We will stand by our Asian families. We will stand by our Black families. We will stand by our same-sex parent families.
(Say what a great highschool is and is not.
Tell them, second, that you will honor the outcome of the election, but that you will fight bigotry. Tell them bigotry is not a democratic value, and that it will not be tolerated at your school. Tell them you stand by your Muslim families. Your same-sex parent families. Your gay students. Your Black families. Your female students. Your Mexican families. Your disabled students. Your immigrant families. Your trans students. Your Native students. Tell them you won’t let anyone hurt them or deport them or threaten them without having to contend with you first. Say that you will stand united as a school community, and that you will protect one another. Say that silence is dangerous, and teach them how to speak up when something is wrong. Then teach them how to speak up, how to love one another, how to understand each other, how to solve conflicts, how to live with diverse and sometimes conflicting ideologies, and give them the skills to enter a world that doesn’t know how to do this.
Tell them bigotry is not a democratic value, and that it will not be tolerated at your school.
Teach them, third, how to be responsible members of a civic society. Teach them how to engage in discussion—not for the sake of winning, but for the sake of understanding and being understood. Students need to learn how to check facts, to weigh news sources, to question taken-for-granted assumptions, to see their own biases, to take feedback, to challenge one another. We need to teach students how to disagree—with love and respect. These skills will be priceless in the coming months and years as we work to build a democratic society that protects the rights of all people ― regardless of the cooperation or resistance those efforts face from the executive branch.
Say that silence is dangerous, and teach them how to speak up when something is wrong.
Finally, remind them ― to ease their minds ― that not everyone who voted for Donald Trump did so because they believe the bigoted things that he has said this year. Many of them voted for him because they feel frustrated with the economy, they feel socially left behind, and they are exercising the one power they have. We need to challenge Trump and his supporters to differentiate between their fears and the bigotry catalyzed by those fears.
In the aftermath of this traumatic election, I hesitate to even exercise my voice in this way. In the past year, I received hate mail and a death threat from white supremacists for blog posts like this ― blog posts that are, let’s be honest, fairly insignificant expressions of personal opinion from a person with very little power. I am not a threat. And yet people have threatened me ― and my family ― for expressing my view that we should build a world in which all human beings can live freely in the wholeness of their identities. I fear that this kind of intimidation will only increase in the event of a Trump victory. I fear that it will worsen tomorrow ― as soon as I hit send ― if Trump supporters are emboldened in their aggression towards people with whom they disagree. And yet the only thing that makes me feel safe in this moment ― as I stare into the face of a possible of a Trump victory ― is to speak up and speak out, and to invite others to do the same.
Tell them, first, that we will protect them. Tell them that we have democratic processes in the U.S. that make it impossible for one mean person to do too much damage. Tell them that we will protect those democratic processes ― and we will use them ― so that Trump is unable to act on many of the false promises he made during his campaign.