To the Editor:
On 11/17, the Rumson Fair Haven Board of Education ruled against 325 parents who asked for an alternative reading choice when the only mandatory required assignment is sexually explicit and laced with profanities. By sexually explicit, I mean chock full of language and situations I would not insult your readers by printing. The BOE explained away their decision and found the material suitable because “the students learn about this in health class.” A female BOE member read this decision aloud and cringed, then apologized, as she defended the suitability in the classroom of “premature ejaculation, etc.” She then stated, “that we need to prepare our children to be COMFORTABLE WITH THE UNCOMFORTABLE.”
What the real lesson was to the parents, who sought an age appropriate alternative, was the KANGAROO court that the BOE used to come up with this decision. Why a kangaroo court? The special “advisory committee” to the board consisted of the English Chair who chose the books, one of his English teachers, an administrator who spoke in support of the books from the start, a librarian who works for the school and one BOE member. Kangaroo Court: Merriam-Webster defines it as a “mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted.”
Why did the 325 waste their time for months fighting for an age appropriate choice? The 325 had zero representation. The court was stacked against the 325 from the beginning.
Ironically, before Halloween the RFH administration sent home a letter to the parents, warning them that their students’ costumes should not be “offensive to any sexual orientation preference or to any national, ethnic, religious, or gender group.”
After the kangaroo decision was made, I found my Irish temper boiling as I publicly stated, “My ethnicity is offended because I am Irish and Bernard MacLaverty who wrote the book in question is not Sean O’Casey, Brian Friel, James Joyce or ranked among the greats. My gender is offended because as a woman I don’t refer to my body parts that way nor do I want my 15 year old to read this violently sexual material that she would not be admitted to a movie theatre to see. Why must we be required not to offend when you offend daily?
NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THE UNCOMFORTABLE,
Siobhan Fallon Hogan
