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I was
really going to do it this time. After writing this feature for two years with
little break, now finally seemed to be the moment. My editor agreed, I dusted
off a few old pieces to rerun, packed my van, and headed for the woods. No more
writing this month, no siree. Just a little rest, relaxation, and recharging.
Instead I’m sitting in the magnificence of Humboldt State Redwood Park, laptop
aglow, pecking out a battery-powered column. My last planned hiatus in December
ended abruptly when Bill Clinton lured me out by getting himself impeached and
bombing Iraq. But this is June, so it must be time for Oroville High School to
select its finest student then badger him.
As
with brother Chris in 1998, the administration of Oroville High has prevented
Jason Niemeyer from giving the valedictory address at this year’s commencement.
Chris had planned to thank God; Jason wished to as well. The Niemeyer family’s
attorney claims he was informed that Jason shouldn’t bother writing a speech
despite his top academic ranking, while Oroville High principal Larry Payne
counters that Niemeyer was denied the podium because he joined his brother’s
free speech suit. Jason maintains he only joined the suit because he was told
he couldn’t speak.
District
Superintendent Barry Kayrell’s public position is that the question is not a
district issue, nor a Larry Payne or Barry Kayrell issue, but a matter for the
courts. Just a victim is Dr. Kayrell. Fortunately, some of us have longer
memories: this is the same Barry Kayrell I saw at Las Plumas High School’s
graduation two days after denying Chris Niemeyer and another student the right
to speak for fear of religious content. The good doctor sat with his head bowed
during opening and closing prayers, seemingly untroubled by the frequent
references to God and Jesus.
So it
apparently is a district decision and a Barry Kayrell decision, and they rule
differently as the mood strikes. By contrast, whatever one thinks of the
Niemeyer boys’ expression of their beliefs there’s nothing weaselly about it.
Kayrell should be taking notes, not hiring lawyers.
The Oroville Union
High School District is pushing the notion that when a government entity allows
a speech it is sanctioning or endorsing it. The thinking seems to be that
government sponsors anything it doesn’t forbid, when it’s role should be to stay
out of the way most of the time. I find this idea that individual rights come
from government, rather than that government exists due to the exercise of those
rights, deeply troubling.
Also
disturbing were speeches I heard at another public high school graduation,
promoting a destructive type of secular humanism that borders on hedonism. It
is my sincere hope that the audience chalked the bluster up to youthful
arrogance/ignorance/exuberance and chose to ignore pretty much everything that
was said. Still, I can’t honestly say I was offended – I have thicker skin or I
wouldn’t put my opinions in the paper every week. But as many seem to achieve
their greatest satisfaction from wallowing in their own bile, I have no trouble
believing that some in the crowd had their day ruined.
Those who tout the
mythical Constitutional clause of separation of church and state (it isn’t
there) often forget that the Bill of Rights (which is there) was motivated
largely by European systems that allowed great freedom on private property while
strictly controlling it elsewhere. As most owned no land they had no rights.
Today as then,
free speech must be allowed in public or it means nothing. Those of us
concerned by the moral void that permeates nearly every aspect of popular
culture have learned to live with this; Kayrell and Payne might again take
notes.
As for me, I’m
making a note to plan no vacation for June, 2003 when John Niemeyer, now 14,
ought to be graduating from Oroville High – to what is likely the great alarm of
the school’s administration, the boy is a straight-A student.
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
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