Back to the future – again!

by Bill LaCroix, Victor

On Dec. 9, the Corvallis school board voted unanimously to approve a “Club America” chapter  on their high school campus. When asked about the legality of allowing a volatile, explicitly hate-centered group to operate within a high school, the Montana School Board Association  (MTSBA), which is the go-to entity for legal advice of all Montana public school districts, opined  that if a student wanted to start a Ku Klux Klan Klub on campus the school would be defenseless  to stop it under Title VIII of the Education for Economic Security Act (the so-called 1984 Equal  Access Act).  

“Club America” is part of TurningPoint USA, the late Charlie Kirk’s well-funded scheme to insert  TPUSA’s brand of White Christian Nationalism into every American high school. Despite this  obvious conflict with the mission of all public schools to provide a safe environment for students  to learn, the Corvallis’ superintendent, Pete Joseph, and the School Board, chose to take  MTSBA’s “legal” advice and voted unanimously to punt. To paraphrase their Dec. 9 actions, they  told concerned community members that “we must support ‘vigorous debate’ on ‘both sides’  and besides, we have no choice!”  

How convenient for them (!), since, after Mr. Kirk’s shooting death on Sept. 10, there has been a  concerted effort from Far Right “influencers”, trolls and politicians to make a martyr of him,  apparently in the name of his white Christian Nationalist cause. But is their claim of helplessness really valid? Or is it now reasonable for the average parent, voter and taxpayer,  who normally assumes school staff’s first priority is to create a safe learning environment for all students, to assume that public school staff and officials at MTSBA have been warned off of any  criticism of the late Mr. Kirk, now that he’s dead and in the process of being canonized by  powerful rightwing players? Is it now reasonable for us to assume that our public officials—and  their lawyers at MTSBA—are just ducking for cover and then to ask them: from who and for  what?  

As far as the “who” and “what”, consider the late Mr. Kirk’s own words and positions, and be  your own judge:  

• “Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of  those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years.”  

• “The West is the best because of Christianity. For America to be great, we must remain majority Christian.”  

• “I don’t think retirement is biblical.” 

• “I think empathy is a made-up, new age term.”  

• “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of…some gun deaths every single year, so that we can  have the Second Amendment.”  

• Joe Biden should “be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against  America.”  

There’s nothing either “vigorous” nor “debatable” about such words and positions. Just the  same old (albeit slightly reworked) white nationalist tropes we’ve been getting beaten over the  head with since 19th Century aristocrats killed close to a million Americans (mostly immigrants!)  asserting their perceived white Christian “right” to own human beings. To point then: Did Title  VIII of the Education for Economic Security Act throw Us the Public back to the 19th Century?  Did Corvallis really have no choice? 

Well, notwithstanding MTSBA’s revealing post-Kirk-shooting interpretation of “equal access” or  the school board’s take on “vigorous debate”, there are some huge gaps you could drive a  “trump train” through in their deer-in-the-headlights acquiescence to the martyring of such a  man or organization that have yet, to my knowledge, to be explored, discussed or explained:  

Why, for instance, did the school board need to “approve” or “disapprove” a Club America  chapter at all, if the law is so pat that even the KKK can get access to the school’s copy machine? The obvious answer is they didn’t, and their vote was theatre. 

Voting unanimously to allow an after-school KKK or “Club America” chapter to operate on  campus is not their job, as defined by Title XIII or any other reasonably-interpreted law. But  protecting their charges from hate speech and its consequences is, and I’d bet even MTSBA, in  their clearer moments, would agree.  

But Title VIII was originally lobbied for by powerful “Christian” groups who wanted to insert  school prayer on campuses, and is the hill the Corvallis trustees and MTSBA apparently want to  embarrass themselves on. So let’s look at it more closely than they apparently did.  

According to Title VIII, the club needs an accredited school employee (not a janitor or lunch lady  or volunteer parent) to sponsor it, which, as of this writing, it does not have. The original  sponsor backed out when they found out what TPUSA was about. So…no sponsor, no club,  right? Why the vote on allowing it then? 

Title VIII also specifies that:  

• The group is not disruptive.

• Persons that are not part of the school may not “direct, conduct, control, or regularly attend meetings.” 

• School officials preserve and have the right to monitor meetings.

• Officials preserve and have the right to require all clubs and/or groups to follow a set of guidelines.

Two points arise from a plain reading of the statute’s requirements. First a question: How is  Corvallis planning to make sure the “club” adheres to these rules when TPUSA’s mission  specifically aims to break at least half of them? To quote Corvallis’ Superintendent, Pete Joseph,  “I’m going to be heavily invested in the agenda items and topics that are brought up—it’s going  to stay in that room. If it gets outside that room and people are feeling threatened, it will be  shut down immediately.” Just the tone of that statement implies that Mr. Joseph is well aware  of what he doesn’t want “outside that room”, which makes the statement itself meaningless to  any reasonably-concerned parent. How, for instance, is Mr. Joseph going to “monitor” testosterone-charged teenage boys parroting the late Mr. Kirk’s beliefs—the ones they learned  about through their “vigorous debating” in one of our tax-funded classrooms—about how  women should “submit” to men and how contraceptives are not “biblical”, and then assure the  community that a teenage girl won’t be impregnated against her will in the back seat of a Subaru by one of ClubAmerica’s “vigorous debaters”? That’s like the century-old argument that the KKK was just a “civic service” organization teaching “leadership skills” and any untoward  things they did on their own is…well… just unfortunate and inevitable.

The second point from this display of Corvallis’ and MTSBA’s public cowardice is a call to  activism. To paraphrase my friend, the late Stewart M. Brandborg—the iconic environmentalist,  defender of grassroots democracy and long-time Bitterrooter—“Democracy is constantly  pouring the hot oil of public opinion down your public officials’ necks”. Right now, to my  knowledge, there is no sponsor for this club. Therefore, according to law, no club (right?) or at  least there shouldn’t be. Is there? Better find out. Then, if and when it does materialize, be  there, in person, to monitor it closely to make sure school staff are on top of holding them to  the non-disruptive guidelines of, say, a chess club.  No choice? B.S.