If you’ve ever worried about the youth of this country not being engaged in politics enough, this story will offer some relief. High school students from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Lexington, Kentucky, tried to attend a discussion between Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Republican governor Matt Bevin, with the goal of covering it for their school paper. This should be a wonderful opportunity for the students, right?
Wrong. The students weren’t allowed in. As they report in their editorial, a man told them they weren’t allowed inside because they didn’t RSVP. Not to be deterred, they wrote an editorial called “No Seat at the Roundtable” instead. Surprising no one, it (rightfully) slams DeVos.
Notably, the event was a roundtable discussion held at a local community college. It was described as an open press event, but as reported by the Washington Post, the students were turned away because they hadn’t received an invitation, and hadn’t RSVPed. Mind you, they’re students who are trying to be politically engaged, so perhaps the typical “rules” of a press event shouldn’t apply to them. Because, again, they’re teenagers.
In their editorial, the students don’t shy away from calling out how ridiculous the situation was. "We expected the event to be intense," they wrote."We expected there to be a lot of information to cover. But not being able to exercise our rights under the First Amendment was something we never thought would happen. We weren't prepared for that. … How odd is it that even though future generations of students' experiences could be based on what was discussed, that we, actual students, were turned away?"
They also called out the eye-rolling-inducing rules about the RSVP. “Not that we’re happy about it,” they wrote, “but we understand why a student news organization wouldn’t have been considered important enough to receive a copy of the media press release. Why, after our explanation that we were not given the press release asking for an RSVP, weren’t we allowed to enter as students and stakeholders?"
From her end, Liz Hill, the Department of Education press secretary, is basically glazing over the situation as a miscommunication. She told the Lexington Herald-Leader that “no one from the Secretary’s staff was made aware that student journalists were attempting to attend the roundtable. We welcome student journalists and would have been happy for them to be in attendance,” she continued. “We are looking into what, if any, miscommunication might have happened between other staff on site for the event.”
The student journalists also point out that the event was held on a Wednesday (meaning: a school day) at 11 o’clock in the morning. Which is when, as we all know, students and teachers are at school. Meaning: They probably aren’t available to go to this extremely relevant and pertinent discussion.
As the students point out in their editorial, it’s highly possible that the content of the discussion is something DeVos wanted to keep people away from. As reported by the Post, the roundtable was largely to discuss something called school “freedom” scholarships. What does this mean? In essence, the scholarships would permit public funds to go to sending kids to private and religious schools … including those that discriminate against LGBTQ students. Lovely!
“We wonder if the topic of school choice at the roundtable in Lexington is what kept public school students from being able to attend,” they wrote. “Don’t they want student input?”
It’s safe to say that DeVos—and most anyone in Trump’s administration—doesn’t want a certain kind of input.