Editorial: Civil rights and charter schools
Twin Peaks Charter Academy valedictorian Evan Young, who was barred from delivering his valedictory address at the school's ceremony, gets a hug from former Twin Peaks physics teacher Dallin Witt after delivering the speech at a private home in Boulder. As part of a message about respecting those with whom you disagree, Young disclosed in the address that he is gay. (Jonathan Castner / Daily Camera)
One simple fact seemed to get lost amid the predictable political ping-pong that followed Twin Peaks Charter Academy's decision to bar valedictorian Evan Young from delivering an address in which he planned to disclose he is gay: Under Colorado law, this should not be a political matter at all.
Colorado's anti-discrimination statute explicitly includes educational institutions and lists sexual orientation among the areas in which discrimination is unlawful, in addition to disability, race, creed, color, sex, marital status, national origin and ancestry. So the various political analogies that have been raised — would it be OK to use a valedictory speech to advocate a position on abortion or capital punishment or the Rockies' pitching staff — are not actually analogous because they are not covered by the state's anti-discrimination law.
Now, it is true that charter schools are not subject to school district policies in a number of areas — among them teacher evaluation, pay, hours, and personnel policies generally — but this isn't one of them. The Colorado Charter Schools Act specifically subjects these public schools to all federal and state anti-discrimination laws.
It strains credulity to imagine that Twin Peaks Principal BJ Buchmann would have prohibited a male valedictorian from talking about his girlfriend or a female valedictorian from talking about her boyfriend. Personal references such as these are not uncommon in high school valedictory addresses. So the question becomes why he chose to prohibit an address that included mention of sexual orientation when that orientation happened to be gay.
It's not as if the situation was unprecedented. Ted Chalfen, a Fairview High School senior two years ago, talked about being gay in his 2013 commencement speech. Emily Bruell, a senior this year at Roaring Fork High School in Carbondale, did exactly what Young hoped to do, coming out as gay in her valedictory address as part of a discussion about labels. When she held up a sign with that label on it — GAY — her audience showed its appreciation of the 17-year-old's courage by rising to give her a standing ovation. The administration at Roaring Fork knew her plan in advance and approved it.
When you read the correspondence between Twin Peaks officials and Rep. Jared Polis on the subject, it appears that certain school officials, particularly counsel Barry Arrington, viewed this as a matter of politics rather than civil rights from the start. Arrington has published his personal view about "whether same-sex relations are licit" on a blog. "A man's body is designed to be complementary Editorial: Civil rights and charter schools - Boulder Daily Camera: