A “Laramie” lawsuit: Footing the bill for censorship
Here we go again: More trouble over a school play. Don’t these people ever learn? I mean the principals and school boards who do the censoring and always seem to do it so clumsily, as if critical thinking were anathema to education and free speech were a legislative inconvenience to be swatted away on a whim — usually the whim of a frightened administrator or a few right-wing parents determined to make everyone else line up with their rigid view of the world. Where do they think they are, Guantanamo Bay?
![](http://www.artscatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/large_brtc-les-mis-8.jpg "Wade Willis leading the charge in \\"Les Miserables\\" and the courtroom. Craig Mitchelldyer photo/Broadway Rose Theatre Company")
The play in question this time around, almost predictably, is The Laramie Project, Moises Kaufman’s moving and mostly even-handed exploration of how the brutal murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard in 1998 affected the people in his town of Laramie, Wyoming. This one’s just too much for the great 16th century thinkers who seem to be running, and running roughshod over, our public schools. Controversy? Perish all thought.
As Melissa Navas reported this morning in The Oregonian, Portland actor and onetime teacher Wade Willis has sued the Beaverton School District for $125,000, claiming he was “harassed, intimidated and humiliated” for his attempt during the 2005-06 school year to bring The Laramie Project to the stage at Southridge High School, where he had been a music, drama and language arts teacher. Shattered by the experience, Willis quit a job that he presumably loved.
His lawyer argued, Navas reports, that “a wrongful discharge lawsuit can be filed when an employer ‘maintained specific working conditions so intolerable’ that a person would resign.” Navas also reports that Kaufman had given permission to take out the play’s profanities to make it appropriate for a school audience, and she points out that although the play is about a hate crime against a gay man, it’s not about sex.
I don’t know Wade Willis, but I’ve seen him many times on stage, and he’s always struck me as an actor who approaches his job in a totally professional manner. (Right now he’s on stage in Broadway Rose Theatre Company’s critically hailed production of the musical Les Miserables.) The loss to the students who no longer get to learn from him is of course impossible to measure, but I imagine it is significant: Here is a man who understands music and theater from the inside out, deeply respects his craft, is exceptionally good at it, and was willing to pass that knowledge along. Further, he wasn’t afraid to confront his students with topics that demand critical thinking — and what greater skill can a school hope to impart to the children in its care?
What strikes one, in the end, is that this is a waste. A waste of a good teacher. A waste of a teachable moment. The negative lesson that inquiry is wrong and will be crushed. A waste, then, of the minds of an entire student body, which learns that if you want to get along, go along. See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil — and of course, if the subject makes anyone uncomfortable, it has to be evil. We’ve seen it recently, as Art Scatter has written, in Sherwood. And back in April our friends at the blog Portland Public Art discovered the ludicrous case of a high-school mural, a riff on Michelangelo’s famous version of God creating Adam, being chopped off at the point of Adam’s discreetly rendered nether regions. (This in Ashland, a city where public nudity is legally sanctioned on the downtown streets.)
I’ve been watching this sort of thing going on for a long, long time, and I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of it. The answer, though, isn’t to get fatigued. It’s to get angry. This nonsense is dangerous (I call it un-American, in a deep sense that I imagine is totally at odds with the censors’ views of anti-Americanism, because this country was built on free expression and unfettered inquiry), and it has to stop.
That’s why I hope Willis gets every penny of the $125,000 he’s seeking. Not because I want to see a financially strapped school district have to shell out a lot of money in a lawsuit: That’s another big part of the waste this incident has wrought. But if he wins, and the Beaverton district has to pay, maybe school administrators across the state will think twice or three times before they pull the plug on a project that might actually prompt their teach-to-the-test-dulled students to think for themselves. And I want future voters who’ve learned how to think.
Please, God and all school boards: Let them think.
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Amen brother! And those of us patriotic citizens who favor the First Amendment and consider the Bill of Rights to be our creed can rejoice on July 4th, 2008, that Jesse Helms, that enemy of all of the above, has been gathered to the fiery bosom of his forebears, joining them on a spit turning as slowly as possible over the fires of hell. Have a Glorious Fourth.
Comment by Martha Ullman West — July 4, 2008 @ 10:32 am
I know Wade Willis personally; I was his student during the four years I attended Southridge from the date of it’s opening until I graduated in 2003. I consider myself his student still today, because the lessons I have learned from him stick with me every moment of the life I am living 3,000 miles away from my home and the theater department I loved. And as I stay in touch with friends and family back home, and hear about what my beloved theater department has become, and what has become of my beloved mentor, I find that I am continuing to learn new lessons from him.
Wade wasn’t just a teacher to the students at Southridge, he was also a trusted friend, much like a second father and all of us his kids. We felt like we could go to him when we needed to, and we wouldn’t be judged or disciplined. We would receive kind (and ocassionally brutally honest but well-needed) lessons that caused us to stop, think, and make educated and creative decisions.
As a kid who never did well in school and never fit in as well as her siblings, I took refuge in that safe and brilliant learning environment. Under this creative and open program students not only performed, but they took charge! We worked hard to build a completely self-sustained, award-winning theater program. My brother had the oportunity to direct a Concert Choir performance under Wade; I was among the first students to participate in the Student Directed One Acts in 2002, and the first student at Southridge to fully produce and direct a full-length show on my own in 2003. My sister has gone on to college to study stage and film acting, and will more than likely end up on the big screen. Anf there are countless others who have gone on to persue their performance art dreams thanks to the love and support they received in their high school theater department. All of us had experiences under Wade’s guidance that we will never forget and which can never be matched. I only wish that more students could have had the same oportunities.
On behalf of the Southridge Theater Alumni, their families, and all of the students who lost a fabulous mentor, we wish Wade all the best and our full support in his fight for justice.
Comment by Karissa Glavan Spang — July 5, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
That’s an incredible testimonial! Sometimes, thinking about the “policy” or the “philosophy,” we don’t consider specific teachers and what they can do to change specific lives. Thank you so much for reminding us.
Comment by Barry Johnson — July 5, 2008 @ 9:01 pm
What sweet remarks from Karissa! After seeing Wade perform this past Sunday, I, too, feel devastated that his talents were removed from the classroom. As a teacher, I can tell you that it is difficult to find such gems teaching kids. For God’s sake! You’d think that districts would want to keep the good ones! I don’t know what the heck is going on, but I can tell you this: it’s hard for teachers to be part of the solution because the good ones stay in their beloved classrooms and don’t become administrators! There’s a reason that so many administrators make poor decisions–they work in offices, away from students, and many times left the teaching profession too early before becoming master teachers. Thank God for vocal students crying out this year in Oregon to perform meaningful work on stage. One of the main reasons I teach middle school is because I can’t stand adults—I have no patience for their self-absorbed, politically-motivated (and let’s face it, in Sherwood and Beaverton, homophobic) decisions to squeeze out all passion and joy left in schools.
Comment by Teacher — July 23, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
Speaking from the standpoint of someone who has dealt with close-minded, power hungry, homophobic and pitifully out of touch school administrators first hand, I am convinced that our public school system is on a very dark path. Both talented teachers and the children they serve are at risk for losing heart, soul and the desire to teach or learn.
I’ve been a devoted drama teacher for six years now, often donating my time and resources to the children and the school with whom I worked (not begrudging a second of it–but LOVING every moment I spent writing, directing, searching for costumes, painting sets, gathering props) but after dealing with short sighted, bigoted and incompetent admin have finally hit my wall.
I’ve fought the good fight over and over, have “stuck it to the man” several times and after all that, when NO CHANGE has been effected, I feel I have to move on from the district I’ve given eight years to in order to preserve my sanity. It breaks my heart to leave a program I worked so hard to create and build up, to leave the students I’ve grown to love and the parents who have been so supportive of the program and the cause, but I truly can no longer deal with the people who’s only objective seems to be to squelch creativity and independent thought. All they care about is image and test scores. Fight them and you pay a high price, as evidenced by the way they’ve handled me and my attempts to broaden horizons. Fellow teachers remain mute because they fear the same fate–or fear for their livelihood, so you stand alone when you take a stand. If you have a union that exists to appease the admin, as I did, then you’re really screwed. No one advocates for you but you. If you’re exceptionally lucky, you have parents who are willing to go to bat for you, but they can’t attend the “investigatory meetings” you’re forced to endure if you fail to “salute.”
At some point it becomes a question of survival. Will you dig your heals in and fight, or will you move on? Isn’t it tragic that those are the choices? Assuming you aren’t a saluter, of course. There is nothing I would love more than to stay and touch the lives of the students with whom I adore. BUT, I can’t. I was dying on the vine where I was. I want to teach on my terms and be a creative force in the lives of my students. I’m not cut out for pandering to test scores and cow-towing to the illogical, self-centered and destructive whims of incompetent and narcissistic administrators. I’m resigning from my position in my district, effective Monday. I hope to find a place where creativity, open-mindedness and the best interest of the student are prized above pettiness, ass-covering and out of control egos. I think at some point the students will revolt. If my situation (and Wade’s) is any indicator, the students will not go quietly into the night as admin continue to create a learning environment that is stifling and patronizing to them. They are much too savvy and sophisticated to tolerate these conditions for long. They are education’s greatest hope for change.
Comment by Jennie Brown — July 24, 2008 @ 5:22 pm