Yesterday's Reformer reported on a contentious school board meeting in which students proposed affiliating with a group that certifies that clothing is manufactured in non-sweatshop conditions.
Predictably two ultra conservative members of the school board tried to put the kibosh on student activism and social concern for workers rights.
Lynn Corum and Mike Hebert who have both been active in Republican organizing for years and are also former members of the BCTV board who resigned after months of explosive meetings and revelations of mismanagement, personal attacks and apparent attempts to remove BCTV programming that was/is distasteful to the conservatives who occupied several seats at that time.
Hebert ran several times for political office, the first time with a platform of opposing civil unions. Toward the end of his chairmanship of the BCTV board he screamed at fellow board members that he was a laughingstock in Montpelier because of newspaper reports about his use of profanity directed at a fellow board member and other controversies at the TV station. Indeed even Governor Douglas seemed to be following the BCTV saga as it unfolded in newspapers and on blog sites.
Corum hosts a Republican talk show on BCTV and recently interviewed Senate candidate Rich Tarrant on it. Today's Reformer has a letter to the editor from Corum regarding Tarrant and asserting that the left is against students achieving success and other nonsense and that “as a BUHS school board member”, it is the "demonizing" of the left that she is “working to avoid”.
Why is the left so against success? Can anyone answer this?
You may recall that Corum spearheaded a campaign to remove all public statements about peace from school doors stating that peace stickers and statements critical of Bush's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were "Hate America" messages.
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From the Reformer article.
A lengthy debate arose from Board member Lynn Corum's request that the board receive a full accounting of a $350,000 federal grant that CLEA received at its inception seven years ago.
John Ungerleider, a teacher at BUHS and a founding organizer of CLEA, told Corum that he found the line of questioning about the funding "insulting."
"Please, I really don't like where you're going. Read the book before the next meeting -- it gives a detailed account of how the grant was spent," said Ungerleider, referring to "Challenging Child Labor," a book which he edited and to which he contributed an essay about CLEA.
Board member Mike Hebert objected to the board adopting a "political standpoint."
"I really have to ask what political standpoint you're speaking of," said Maceda-Maciel. "This is a political agenda in the sense that it's a human rights issue.
Hebert responded, "This is a very political issue. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but asking what we do as a board."
Corum challenged the members of CLEA on the number of colleges and universities actually affiliated with WRC. Corum maintains that the Web site only lists nine.
"When I went to the Web site only a few hours ago it listed 155, all around the country," said Maceda-Maciel.
A search by the Reformer of the Web site found 152 affiliated colleges and universities.
Corum also voiced an objection to the word "collective" found on the WRC Web site, which she said sounded "communistic."
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Hilarious!
Corum and Hebert certainly have their rights to advocate for their positions, but I wonder if they represent the political agendas of a significant number of people here or if they are perhaps examples of stealth candidates that got on the school board appearing to be level headed moderates, but once elected they could then put their very conservative sentiments and agendas into actions that affect our students and impact our community in a number of ways.