OPINION pages by emily zeller
A
staff editorial:
between a
B L O C K& a
hard place
s an organization that represents students, Free State Journalism calls on all student and school organizations to be transparent with their social media policies, especially related to how accounts deal with comments and blocking followers. On Aug. 16 2020, the @freestatefootball Instagram account posted a team photo in which none of the players were wearing masks. When students called out the team on social media for not following guidelines, students were blocked from the account or restricted from commenting. Shortly after, @freestatefootball moved to a private account, effectively allowing access to content to only approved members. On Nov. 17 2020, the @free_state_stuco Instagram account posted a photo of a room of student council members. As of that date, we were in the first hybrid model. It was a Tuesday, meaning only students with the last names L-R were to attend in-person. Four students in the photo were not scheduled to be in-person school on Tuesday Nov. 17. While it is possible administration allowed these students to come in, the students were not socially distanced within the classroom. The large number of people in the photo got the attention of other students. Senior Amelia Lang responded to the post on her Instagram story, saying, “I didn’t know today’s hybrid was A-Z!” and “It’s super disappointing to see our student leaders ignoring social distancing guidelines… repeatedly.” Others emailed assistant principal and activities director Matt Renk, Principal Myron Graber and StuCo sponsor Katy Hayden with concerns about the lack of following guidelines. Shortly after, Lang and others involved were blocked by the StuCo Instagram.
16
On Feb. 24 2021, a virtual assembly video for the delayed homecoming week was posted on Ryland Cummings’s YouTube channel. In the video, StuCo members performed skits that mocked Encore, an annual choir event, and social distancing guidelines. Students found this insulting to the choir department, and more widely, ironic because homecoming was delayed due to a COVID-19 exposure. Students reached out to administration with concerns about this and were later blocked. On April 13 2021, StuCo posted the list of prom court candidates on Instagram, two of whom were involved with these previous interactions and had been blocked. Within minutes, senior Drew Raney commented “Okay but how many of these people are blocked? Alum Joe Zollner commented using the same phrase moments later. Some prom court members liked these comments and a comment that read “#abolishstuco”. Both comments were deleted, commenting was disabled on all posts and anyone who had interacted with the comments was blocked by the StuCo account. Shortly after, Raney and some members of the prom court received an email from Hayden, which said in part “...using profanity, sending hate messages, and liking or associating yourself with any of these messages is a violation of instagram and a violation of the FS student handbook.” There is not one succinct definition of hate speech, but most boil it down to abuse or threats based in hate of a certain identity or marginalized group. Is Student Council an identity? A marginalized group? By deeming the comments and posts criticizing their organization hate speech, StuCo trivializes and minimizes actual descrimination that people of color, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities and other groups face.
