Dear Highline students: Your feelings don’t matter

I think it’s important to make clear a simple message to Highline Public School students (and, really, all students, high school, and college): your feelings don’t matter.

Yes, it’s a jarring and somewhat offensive message, but because individual feelings are now dictating what content is or isn’t punishable on campuses where open expression of ideas is supposed to be encouraged, it’s important to single out the root cause of campus censorship. Your feelings do not matter and shouldn’t get in the way of our rights.

Last week, the superintendent Dr. Susan Enfield wrote a letter (that she refers to as a “Statement of Solidarity”) to families explaining the district will crack down on speech that might offend or disrespect students.

It’s a worrisome letter that signals the district is less interested in exploring ideas students might disagree with, than protecting snowflakes and their hypersensitivity to not being challenged with ideas they dislike.

After blaming the “divisive and disturbing” campaign season (and singling out Donald Trump’s rhetoric in an interview with KIRO 7), Dr. Enfield wrote, in part:

Regardless of our own political affiliations or beliefs, every Highline staff member has an obligation to you, our students and families, to ensure you feel safe, welcomed and respected at school. We commit to intervening when we see or hear offensive, bigoted words and actions.

Highline students are brilliant, beautiful and brimming with promise, and we recognize that they need our protection, advocacy and reassurance now more than ever. This is our moral obligation as educators.

She later told KIRO 7 that she was told that students in the district have “been repeating language they heard from presidential candidates in the media.” Students are paying attention to a presidential campaign season and they’re discussing issues of national importance? Oh, the horror.

Specifically, though, she cited examples of students discussing the Donald Trump campaign, telling KIRO TV:

“I did use one example in my letter, about a student seeing a ‘Trump Wins’ headline, and crying, thinking that he was going to be deported … This is a young child. He doesn’t know. Somebody says ‘if this person gets elected, you will be deported.’ Now, obviously, that’s not accurate.”

We’re so lucky that Dr. Enfield is here to protect kids from hearing political debates they don’t like.

Here’s the problem with this ridiculous approach: we’re pretending the individual feelings of students matter so much that we’re willing to stifle speech an ideologue views as disrespectful or offensive. She continues going down this path that coddles students, protecting them from anything that they might be troubled by – pretending that the real world isn’t chock full of everyday experiences that will challenge their core beliefs. These kids then get into the real world and instead of debating issues, they crawl into the fetal position, cry out about how their being offended, then they try to stifle speech that they claim is hurtful.

Related: Microaggressions are an excuse to be offended, feel victimized

There’s a reason the First Amendment doesn’t bar speech someone might find disrespectful or offensive; it’s subjective.

Clearly the student Dr. Enfield highlights was offended by the mere discussion of deporting illegal immigrants. We’re supposed to bar conversations about an issue that the majority of the voters are considering when they cast their ballots? Who defines what is offensive? And who cares what you think is disrespectful? Your feelings don’t dictate what conversations we can or can’t have and as FIRE President Greg Lukianoff once told me, “Imagine the power to censor in the hands of your worst enemy.”

There is a clear difference between an individual student who is purposefully targeting a student with bullying and students talking openly, honestly and even un-PC about political issues; this letter makes no distinction.

Dr. Enfield, who I’m sure tells herself that she supports free speech, told KIRO 7 that “…when I have children who are feeling frightened, who are feeling intimidated, I simply cannot stand by as the superintendent and as a member of this community and say nothing.”

Well, your apparent disregard for free speech rights in a public school district frightens me, but I won’t get in the way of you speaking out.

But perhaps your energy would be better spent teaching kids how to engage in meaningful debates with people they disagree with (that ideological diversity is incredibly important in helping you grow as a person).

Perhaps you can you can teach your students the tools they need to be able to encourage more speech, not silence the speech they are offended by simply because someone has the audacity to think differently than they do.

Perhaps you can teach your students to debate issues and properly communicate to win arguments, rather than silence the opposition by declaring to the world your feelings are hurt.