Jordan School District officials insist that the removal of 16 pieces of student art from a local bookstore because the store contains gay and lesbian materials does not represent a policy position.
The principal of Crescent View Middle School asked an art teacher to remove art that had been on display at the bookstore five weeks, said district spokeswoman Patty Dahl. "As a district, we've taken no official action at all. We got swept into the middle of this controversy. We don't want the children to become entangled in this also."The district is, however, re-evaluating its guidelines governing display of student art, writing and other creations in commercial establishments.
Five weeks ago, the art pieces went on display at A Woman's Place bookstore in Draper. The school district received a complaint from an individual who said that the student art should not be displayed in that location, Dahl said. Since the student work had already been up longer that would be expected, the principal asked that the pictures be returned to the school. "He was attempting to avoid getting the children and the art program in the middle of a community controversy."
Because of district policy, the identification of the complaining individual will not be given, said Dahl.
But the owner of the bookstore, Sally Smith, contends that it was a school board member that took the complaint to the principal. That was the explanation she was given by the teacher, Marsha Sawyer, when she removed the art and by Doug Bates, legal counsel for the State Board of Education, she contends.
"Sawyer told me that principal Tom Hicks was acting on instructions from a school board member," said Smith. She argues that civil rights have been violated. "It is disappointing that Principal Tom Hicks yielded to extremist demands by individuals with such flagrant disregard for human rights. Most fundamentally, this is a censorship issue - plain and simple."
She accuses the district of acting unilaterally, without regard for procedure and with intimidation, violating the civil rights of the students by censoring where their artwork can be displayed.
A private business has been made the object of outside censorship, Smith asserts. "This is an unconscionable trammeling of first amendment principles. There is no place for censorship in a free society, not in the bookstore and not in the school."
Although Smith has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah about her civil rights concerns, she has not taken legal action. "I would like censorship to emerge the real issue. The issue is much bigger than whether artwork hangs alongside lesbian literature - which, in fact, has never happened."
Representing the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project of the ACLU of Utah, Charlene Orchard said that the removal of the artwork indicates a tendency toward fascism.
"One important test of a true democracy is not openness to ideas with which most people agree, but rather, openness to ideas that many people detest. These acts of censorship represent a dangerous turn toward unlawful and unwise tendencies to control what other people see, think, believe and read."