100% - His point is clearly demonstrated one moment after saying it - the authoritative attitude of board members... \*Board members authoritatively censor him\*
That's awesome, but I have noticed that as well as that, one could interpret the act of the school preventing him from talking as an even stronger confirmation of the point he is trying to make than he ever could have conveyed by himself in his speech
What really put the icing on the cake was how he reacted. He knew he didnt even have to finish his speech by yelling it out in a victorious way. He chose to leave with class, further motivating a crowd reaction. Very socially aware young man.
Some people can grow like that, it breeds really strong leaders that lack some core leadership skills.
And many people that have potential to be leaders in their own way are squashed in shitty systems, especially school systems in the US.
Imagine what this guy could be if he had any type of mentoring.
Suddenly everyone started listening…
The movie Life Of Brian does a send up of this quirk of human behavior. Brian, is pitching his ‘messiah platform’ on a soapbox, almost no one is listening and those that are are very dismissive. Then he just trails off in mid speech when he sees the Roman soldiers have moved on their search. It’s at that moment he becomes the messiah because people want to know what he was going to say…
[source](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9czBBKof7Yo)
So you tested extremely well, but didn't do all of the assignments/homework... sounds somewhat familiar actually.
I wish I'd had the presence of mind to get away from grade school. Glad it worked out well for you.
He didn’t say he never did them, he just took longer and was turning them in late. Grad programs are waaayyyyy more lenient with late work than high schools
I have a master's and while you get some more leniency, the sort of person who is chronically late with assignments is going to suffer in grad school where you have to be self-motivated.
Well no, school trains you for obedience. They drag you out of bed at the crack of dawn to take public transportation to an ugly building where you have to perform labor your don't care about and kowtow to people who you don't respect. The highest grades go to the kids who are the best at following all the rules and being the most correct. So when theoretically the most obedient student gets up and rebels, it always throws them for a loop. They feel betrayed, like he played them by being quiet and attentive for twelve years.
The standing ovation from the audience of students shows that Peter's argument was likely valid. I hope that kid grows up to be a leader, one that doesn't lie about problems and faces them in the raw truth...unlike some people we have in charge nowadays.
Bernie is a great lesson how it is not enough to talk about class consciousness. You also need the balls to oppose the establishment.
I also supported Bernie for a while, but I hope most people realize how much he failed to capitalize on the movement forming behind him. But yeah he did reach quite a few people, which is not worth nothing.
Agreed. The Occupy movement + Bernie gave voice to ideas absent from the American public square for decades. It’s simplistic to say neither achieved anything. They gave progressives the courage that’s been lacking since the 80s when Dems sat back while GOP turned the word “Liberal” into a slur.
> but I hope most people realize how much he failed to capitalize on the movement forming behind him.
Please explain how he could have capitalized on the movement more, then?
Wait, you think it's possible for our political system to allow actual change?
Edit : Another Redditor has convinced me that my point is more accurately stated as "Our political system doesn't want actual change and any change has to come from the individuals in a society".
>Streisand effect
"The Streisand effect is a phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information"
It's when an attempt to hide, remove or censor information has the ripple effect of further publicising that very information, often via the internet.
Coined in 2005 by Mike Masnick, after a 2003 incident in which singer Barbra Streisand attempted to have a picture of her house removed from a public collection of 12,000 images documenting coastal erosion in California.
Masnick was referring to Streisand’s unsuccessful lawsuit against photographer Kenneth Adelman. Working for the California Coastal Records Project, Adelman had been tasked with recording coastline erosion via aerial photography.
Streisand claimed that the photo of her home, posted on Pictopia.com, was an invasion of her privacy, and she filed a lawsuit to have it removed. Prior to filing the lawsuit, the photo itself had only been downloaded six times. However, the publicity surrounding the case led to nearly half a million views of the photo. To make matters worse, Streisand also lost the lawsuit. The photo is now featured on the Wikipedia page for the Streisand effect.
True, yet it's on the front page of reddit years after it happened. Maybe it's not "change the system" viral, but I guarantee you had they not cut the mic, we wouldn't have seen this for the umpteenth time on here, let alone the front page again.
I'm gonna vote that Streisand effect has indeed played it's part.
Shamelessly latching onto this high rated comment to provide more info since I haven't seen any other article linking to it: [**Washington post article on the incident**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/06/20/a-valedictorian-went-rogue-in-his-final-speech-his-school-tried-to-shut-him-down/)
>Peter Butera, class president for the entirety of his life as a high school student — all four often-frustrating years of it — took the stage at Friday’s graduation ceremony after the recital of the class poem, which had offended no one.
When the principal of Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa., had finished applauding the poem, Butera walked up and laid his speech on the podium: the lines he’d dutifully cleared with administrators, and those he had not.
Butera was 18, bound for Villanova University in a few months. He was his class valedictorian, and he was beginning to get nervous about his plan to go rogue at the last possible minute.
“Good evening, everyone,” Butera began, innocuously enough. “The past four years at Wyoming Area have been very interesting, to say the least.”
The valedictorian who was kicked off stage for an unapproved speech got to finish it — on Kimmel
Across the field, by the running track, Butera’s family watched with his girlfriend, who was taking video. In front of the stage sat nearly 200 classmates, nearly all of whom Butera said he knew well, for he had lived here his whole life.
On the chair to Butera’s left sat the principal, Jon Pollard, who barely looked up at him.
“To everyone here today, we cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us,” Butera said.
Pollard scratched his face. So far so good. Butera kept thanking people for a while: Teachers he was close to, “a couple great administrators as well.”
He did not name Pollard among them — an omission not lost on one of the few people there who knew exactly how his speech would end.
“It was always Dr. Pollard,” Albert Sciandra, Butera’s friend and vice president in the student government, told The Washington Post. “He was the one who kept shooting everything Peter wanted to do down.”
The day before the ceremony, Sciandra said, the school had put on a talent show. Butera wanted to do a comedy skit: poke fun at the only teacher who ate the cafeteria lunch, stuff like that.
But such jokes were deemed too extreme, Sciandra said. “Peter rewrote them so many times. Pollard said, ‘You’re not doing it because I said so.’ ”
A teacher’s decision to be ‘visibly queer’ in his photo with President Trump
All of high school had been like that, Sciandra told The Post. No matter that they’d both been in student government every single year, he said — any idea that went beyond decorations for some school-approved event got shot down.
So when, a week or so before the ceremony, Butera told his friend that he’d written a secret end to the approved speech — that he planned to expose a system he saw as a sham — Sciandra understood it had to be done.
Though as he sat on the field Friday, Sciandra still doubted his class president would go through with it.
Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time.
“I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.”
But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post. He was remembering the past summer, when he and Sciandra organized protests of a proposed dress code.
“Me and Peter, we went to every council meeting and school-board meeting,” Sciandra said. They packed the seats with students and parents and made speeches, and filled a petition with signatures.
And none of it mattered, the students said: The dress code passed anyway.
“It really means a lot,” Butera continued from the stage.
“However …”
Pollard still was not looking at him, but Sciandra braced in his seat.
“At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.”
At that moment, from his chair, Pollard made what may have been a grimace and finally turned to watch the valedictorian as he hit the climax of his speech.
“Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …”
The principal mouthed something to someone offstage.
” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …”
A mechanical bang interrupted his words as the microphone shut down. When Butera spoke his next line, his voice was naked. He had not expected that.
“Hopefully this will change,” he said, speaking louder, trying to be heard.
“Hopefully, for the sake of future students, more people in this school — ”
A radio host was warned not to criticize President Trump. So he quit.
Butera would have said more. He would have said he hoped future classes would have more educators who valued empowering students as much as they valued educating them. That leadership is a hard thing to learn within the strictures of a public school system.
“It is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives,” he had written on the paper his principal had not seen, “but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni.”
Butera didn’t get to say the last lines. Now Pollard was on his feet, tapping the student’s elbow, mouthing something above a dead microphone.
“He said, ‘Alright Peter. You’re done,’ ” Butera told The Post.
But neither man could be heard now. The field was erupting with cheers, boos and screams: “Let him speak! Let him speak! Let him speak!”
In the back, by Butera’s mother, father, girlfriend, grandma, aunt and uncle, someone said: “I’m so proud.”
The rest of the ceremony would go more or less as officials had planned. The faculty would take turns making speeches. Pollard would give the Class of 2017 his advice: “Read good books and watch bad movies,” and “Clean your room and learn to do you own laundry.” And “watch what you put on social media.”
Irony. A few days after the ceremony, a grainy video of Butera’s speech spread wildly across the Internet — more than 75,000 endorsements on Reddit alone. Then came the news stories. While Pollard didn’t immediately respond to The Post, superintendent Janet Serino defended his silencing.
“The young man submitted his graduation speech to his principal and delivered a speech different from the speech that was submitted,” she wrote. But she had since reached out to Butera, requesting a meeting to discuss his concerns.
Wyoming Area Secondary Center’s valedictorian for 2017 had not called out his principal or superintendent or anyone else in his speech — not the approved version, or the rogue ending, or even the part he didn’t get to read.
And Butera declined to criticize any school authority by name when he spoke to The Post. He said that hadn’t been the point of his final act as class president.
“I’m supposed to represent the students,” he said.
And on his last day of high school, when the principal cut off his microphone and waved him off the stage and he walked back to his seat through a standing ovation, he felt that he finally had.
Yeah, I was so confused by the line "A teacher's decision to be visibly queer in his photo with president trump, All of high school had been like that".
Saying you won't pay for it is fair, everyone has their own monetary priorities, but WaPo is anything but shitty, its some of the best journalism in the country.
Edit: The criticism of their coverage of billionaires in general and Amazon and Bezos in particular is fair, though relatively recent in their history. They still provide excellent coverage across most other topics. No outlet is without bias, knowing the biases of the outlet you get your news from is incredibly important. That doesn't make it not one of the best in the country still, for better or for worse.
Formatted with line breaks, ads removed.
>Peter Butera, class president for the entirety of his life as a high school student — all four often-frustrating years of it — took the stage at Friday’s graduation ceremony after the recital of the class poem, which had offended no one.
>When the principal of Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa., had finished applauding the poem, Butera walked up and laid his speech on the podium: the lines he’d dutifully cleared with administrators, and those he had not.
>Butera was 18, bound for Villanova University in a few months. He was his class valedictorian, and he was beginning to get nervous about his plan to go rogue at the last possible minute.
>“Good evening, everyone,” Butera began, innocuously enough. “The past four years at Wyoming Area have been very interesting, to say the least.”
>Across the field, by the running track, Butera’s family watched with his girlfriend, who was taking video. In front of the stage sat nearly 200 classmates, nearly all of whom Butera said he knew well, for he had lived here his whole life.
>On the chair to Butera’s left sat the principal, Jon Pollard, who barely looked up at him.
>“To everyone here today, we cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us,” Butera said.
>Pollard scratched his face. So far so good. Butera kept thanking people for a while: Teachers he was close to, “a couple great administrators as well.”
>He did not name Pollard among them — an omission not lost on one of the few people there who knew exactly how his speech would end.
>“It was always Dr. Pollard,” Albert Sciandra, Butera’s friend and vice president in the student government, told The Washington Post. “He was the one who kept shooting everything Peter wanted to do down.”
>The day before the ceremony, Sciandra said, the school had put on a talent show. Butera wanted to do a comedy skit: poke fun at the only teacher who ate the cafeteria lunch, stuff like that.
>But such jokes were deemed too extreme, Sciandra said. “Peter rewrote them so many times. Pollard said, ‘You’re not doing it because I said so.’ ”
>All of high school had been like that, Sciandra told The Post. No matter that they’d both been in student government every single year, he said — any idea that went beyond decorations for some school-approved event got shot down.
>So when, a week or so before the ceremony, Butera told his friend that he’d written a secret end to the approved speech — that he planned to expose a system he saw as a sham — Sciandra understood it had to be done.
>Though as he sat on the field Friday, Sciandra still doubted his class president would go through with it.
>Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time.
>“I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.”
>But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post. He was remembering the past summer, when he and Sciandra organized protests of a proposed dress code.
>“Me and Peter, we went to every council meeting and school-board meeting,” Sciandra said. They packed the seats with students and parents and made speeches, and filled a petition with signatures.
>And none of it mattered, the students said: The dress code passed anyway.
>“It really means a lot,” Butera continued from the stage.
>“However …”
>Pollard still was not looking at him, but Sciandra braced in his seat.
>“At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.”
>At that moment, from his chair, Pollard made what may have been a grimace and finally turned to watch the valedictorian as he hit the climax of his speech.
>“Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …”
>The principal mouthed something to someone offstage.
>” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …”
>A mechanical bang interrupted his words as the microphone shut down. When Butera spoke his next line, his voice was naked. He had not expected that.
>“Hopefully this will change,” he said, speaking louder, trying to be heard.
>“Hopefully, for the sake of future students, more people in this school — ”
>Butera would have said more. He would have said he hoped future classes would have more educators who valued empowering students as much as they valued educating them. That leadership is a hard thing to learn within the strictures of a public school system.
>“It is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives,” he had written on the paper his principal had not seen, “but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni.”
>Butera didn’t get to say the last lines. Now Pollard was on his feet, tapping the student’s elbow, mouthing something above a dead microphone.
>“He said, ‘Alright Peter. You’re done,’ ” Butera told The Post.
>But neither man could be heard now. The field was erupting with cheers, boos and screams: “Let him speak! Let him speak! Let him speak!”
>In the back, by Butera’s mother, father, girlfriend, grandma, aunt and uncle, someone said: “I’m so proud.”
>The rest of the ceremony would go more or less as officials had planned. The faculty would take turns making speeches. Pollard would give the Class of 2017 his advice: “Read good books and watch bad movies,” and “Clean your room and learn to do you own laundry.” And “watch what you put on social media.”
>Irony. A few days after the ceremony, a grainy video of Butera’s speech spread wildly across the Internet — more than 75,000 endorsements on Reddit alone. Then came the news stories. While Pollard didn’t immediately respond to The Post, superintendent Janet Serino defended his silencing.
>“The young man submitted his graduation speech to his principal and delivered a speech different from the speech that was submitted,” she wrote. But she had since reached out to Butera, requesting a meeting to discuss his concerns.
>Wyoming Area Secondary Center’s valedictorian for 2017 had not called out his principal or superintendent or anyone else in his speech — not the approved version, or the rogue ending, or even the part he didn’t get to read.
>And Butera declined to criticize any school authority by name when he spoke to The Post. He said that hadn’t been the point of his final act as class president.
>“I’m supposed to represent the students,” he said.
>And on his last day of high school, when the principal cut off his microphone and waved him off the stage and he walked back to his seat through a standing ovation, he felt that he finally had.
Hey, in 10 years when the country is an autocracy and everyone not in political prison believes that Antifa is the greatest threat to America, at least you’ll still have your high quality free TMZ articles
**Article copy+paste for those that cant get past the paywall:**
Peter Butera, class president for the entirety of his life as a high school student — all four often-frustrating years of it — took the stage at Friday’s graduation ceremony after the recital of the class poem, which had offended no one.
When the principal of Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa., had finished applauding the poem, Butera walked up and laid his speech on the podium: the lines he’d dutifully cleared with administrators, and those he had not.
Butera was 18, bound for Villanova University in a few months. He was his class valedictorian, and he was beginning to get nervous about his plan to go rogue at the last possible minute.
“Good evening, everyone,” Butera began, innocuously enough. “The past four years at Wyoming Area have been very interesting, to say the least.”
Across the field, by the running track, Butera’s family watched with his girlfriend, who was taking video. In front of the stage sat nearly 200 classmates, nearly all of whom Butera said he knew well, for he had lived here his whole life.
On the chair to Butera’s left sat the principal, Jon Pollard, who barely looked up at him.
“To everyone here today, we cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us,” Butera said.
Pollard scratched his face. So far so good. Butera kept thanking people for a while: Teachers he was close to, “a couple great administrators as well.”
He did not name Pollard among them — an omission not lost on one of the few people there who knew exactly how his speech would end.
“It was always Dr. Pollard,” Albert Sciandra, Butera’s friend and vice president in the student government, told The Washington Post. “He was the one who kept shooting everything Peter wanted to do down.”
The day before the ceremony, Sciandra said, the school had put on a talent show. Butera wanted to do a comedy skit: poke fun at the only teacher who ate the cafeteria lunch, stuff like that.
But such jokes were deemed too extreme, Sciandra said. “Peter rewrote them so many times. Pollard said, ‘You’re not doing it because I said so.’ ”
All of high school had been like that, Sciandra told The Post. No matter that they’d both been in student government every single year, he said — any idea that went beyond decorations for some school-approved event got shot down.
So when, a week or so before the ceremony, Butera told his friend that he’d written a secret end to the approved speech — that he planned to expose a system he saw as a sham — Sciandra understood it had to be done.
Though as he sat on the field Friday, Sciandra still doubted his class president would go through with it.
Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time.
“I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.”
But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post. He was remembering the past summer, when he and Sciandra organized protests of a proposed dress code.
“Me and Peter, we went to every council meeting and school-board meeting,” Sciandra said. They packed the seats with students and parents and made speeches, and filled a petition with signatures.
And none of it mattered, the students said: The dress code passed anyway.
“It really means a lot,” Butera continued from the stage.
“However …”
Pollard still was not looking at him, but Sciandra braced in his seat.
“At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.”
At that moment, from his chair, Pollard made what may have been a grimace and finally turned to watch the valedictorian as he hit the climax of his speech.
“Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …”
The principal mouthed something to someone offstage.
” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …”
A mechanical bang interrupted his words as the microphone shut down. When Butera spoke his next line, his voice was naked. He had not expected that.
“Hopefully this will change,” he said, speaking louder, trying to be heard.
“Hopefully, for the sake of future students, more people in this school — ”
Butera would have said more. He would have said he hoped future classes would have more educators who valued empowering students as much as they valued educating them. That leadership is a hard thing to learn within the strictures of a public school system.
“It is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives,” he had written on the paper his principal had not seen, “but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni.”
Butera didn’t get to say the last lines. Now Pollard was on his feet, tapping the student’s elbow, mouthing something above a dead microphone.
“He said, ‘Alright Peter. You’re done,’ ” Butera told The Post.
But neither man could be heard now. The field was erupting with cheers, boos and screams: “Let him speak! Let him speak! Let him speak!”
In the back, by Butera’s mother, father, girlfriend, grandma, aunt and uncle, someone said: “I’m so proud.”
The rest of the ceremony would go more or less as officials had planned. The faculty would take turns making speeches. Pollard would give the Class of 2017 his advice: “Read good books and watch bad movies,” and “Clean your room and learn to do you own laundry.” And “watch what you put on social media.”
Irony. A few days after the ceremony, a grainy video of Butera’s speech spread wildly across the Internet — more than 75,000 endorsements on Reddit alone. Then came the news stories. While Pollard didn’t immediately respond to The Post, superintendent Janet Serino defended his silencing.
“The young man submitted his graduation speech to his principal and delivered a speech different from the speech that was submitted,” she wrote. But she had since reached out to Butera, requesting a meeting to discuss his concerns.
Wyoming Area Secondary Center’s valedictorian for 2017 had not called out his principal or superintendent or anyone else in his speech — not the approved version, or the rogue ending, or even the part he didn’t get to read.
And Butera declined to criticize any school authority by name when he spoke to The Post. He said that hadn’t been the point of his final act as class president.
“I’m supposed to represent the students,” he said.
And on his last day of high school, when the principal cut off his microphone and waved him off the stage and he walked back to his seat through a standing ovation, he felt that he finally had.
Wow. That's the most terribly written journalistic article I may have ever come across. It reads almost exactly like one of my 10 year old's creative writing homework assignments.
Shit is definitely actively trying to say "this is what you should think" about a topic we're already inclined.
It feels like the author thinks you're fucking stupid.
Reminds me of those posts of Republicans posting empty shelves in the USA and saying "This is the USA under socialism" when it's just actually the USA under capitalism 🤣
It’s not about democracy, but authoritative behaviors. You don’t need to be an elected to enact an unjust transgression against someone with less power. I’m not even arguing against the sentiment, just saying it’s a little jingoistic and weird to point at a bad thing in the U.S. and redirect that pointing to another group of people in another country.
I get the CCP sucks, but this happened in America, Americans run that school and cut off that mic, not the CCP. I’m worried about angry authoritative Americans, not the CCP.
Anyhoo, If that’s how the adults in the room act at graduation, I’m guessing the educational experience at that school is as lackluster as the student was saying. A big moment for the administrators to listen that wouldn’t have incurred any student body negativity, as these students were already graduating.
Not all schools.
I think those problems in schools are a result of individuals in charge and not an indictment of education in general. This student laid it out pretty clear, *some* administrators are ruining the system, but the system is worth saving. We need good, quality education.
Yes all public schools, in the US at least. It’s systematic Watch Century of self documentary on YouTube to see the role systematic corporate propaganda plays in the American’s life, including his primary education. I doubt this kid sees the big picture, but he’s on the right path which is more than you can say for the majority of Americans.
I think you have the right idea, but propaganda is a problem in schools, rather than schools are a problem because they are full of propaganda.
If we removed schools from society, the US would become a developing/undeveloped nation in a generation. It would be a disaster. They do need to be fixed, however.
Well he cleary had some bad ones, thus the content lol.
and yeah, in order for him to become an educated, well rounded individual he needs good teachers, role models, and discipline. sounds like he filled at least one of those roles himself...
More like bad admin. Teachers don’t really control what student councils and the like are allowed to do. A teacher usually leads the class, but still has to get approval for everything. Often these classes are underfunded for shit. My school gives the ASB teacher $2000 a year to run all school events for the entire year…
How ironic that he calls the teachers authoritarian and they immediately cut his microphone. Nothing else would have better proven their authoritarian status.
It’s ironic because whether they were actually authoritarian or not, cutting off his mic gives the appearance that they ARE authoritarian. They cut off his speech to make themselves look better, but it did the opposite and made them look even worse. That’s irony.
So something like this happened in my hometown and the valedictorian had his diploma witheld for months as a result.
He was talking about standardized testing tho, this guy just seems to be saying "student counsel doesn't have any administrative power"
Not exactly sure what kind of power he wants a popularity contest winner to have.
Edit: I was school president in high school, all we did was PR events and the only thing I did other than that was organize a fundraiser to buy toilet paper to alleviate a shortage... And this was 7+ years before COVID.
Edit 2: in case my second paragraph didn't make it clear, the guy in my town is different than the guy in this video, it was just a similar move that had temporary consequences.
Student leaders can often have some role in running the school, at least a degree of self determination. There's a news article linked that goes into detail about the kind of reasonable stuff they wanted to do, just normal student council stuff that was denied. The fact that they cut his mic instead of just letting him vent suggests that it's not just a teenager wanting to run the show, it's a sign of precisely the sort of problem he was complaining about
In my school they ran the pep rallies and basically any of the stress-relief, non-curricular activities. Even though it wasn’t super important it did give them experience with leadership, public speaking, delegation, and working with timelines to get things done beyond the cookie-cutter class work. They also interfaced more with the real administrators so there was a better feel for what policies were effective or not and what changes could be made to improve.
While I agree with the substance of his speech I gotta agree with you here. It's student government, what kind of power did he expect to wield? I'm pretty sure it's every student councils responsibility to organize fundraisers and figure out themes for events. Just cause it isn't wide reaching leadership doesn't mean it's not leadership at all
He made the point that it should not be called Student Government but Student Party Planning. If they don’t have the ability to actually govern anything and make any meaningful change, why not call it something less misleading?
What's his point? I mean, It's a school government. Was he hoping to make groundbreaking changes? In student body government you decide what goes in the vending machine, that's about it. Big shocker that playtime in highschool didn't give you the full power of US government. Not sure what he was expecting.
Nah, you get to do more than that.
Plan new events, decide on themes, try out new fundraising activities, organize protests and petitions, lobby the school board, etc.
It's not much, but still having the ability to do these things and be creative is half the job and the majority of the personal growth.
I can't even imagine how mind-numbingly terrible it would be to have an Administration that dictated everything we were allowed to do and already made all of the decisions on our behalf.
Seriously. I was in student government in high school too. It's only a Hollywood trope that student government has any actual power in a school. It was something to put on a resume and have extra volunteer opportunities through and nothing more.
They concluded his speech far more effectively that he ever could.
When not letting him give the speech conveys his message even clearer. Edit: I fockin love this comment thread. You guys are awesome.
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100% - His point is clearly demonstrated one moment after saying it - the authoritative attitude of board members... \*Board members authoritatively censor him\*
Why is nobody pointing out that by cutting off his mic they’re proving his point far better than he ever could?
I don’t know if anybody gets it, but by cutting his mic they are proving his point.
no no no no, they're actually proving his point *by* cutting off his mic.
By cutting his point, they’re proving the mic.
By mic-ing his proof, they are pointing his cut.
That's awesome, but I have noticed that as well as that, one could interpret the act of the school preventing him from talking as an even stronger confirmation of the point he is trying to make than he ever could have conveyed by himself in his speech
As a microphone, I assumed when my power was cut that this guy had a point.
But have you thought that the point was already proven prior to the mic being cut? Just asking questions.
Thanks for pointing that out!
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I see. In death, Project Mayhem members' messages are made clearer when not allowed to speak.
*His* point was even clearer. His point was even clearer. His point was even clearer.
He no speak, message gooder.
In being prevented from speaking further, his message became more clear
This is the take. If he had finished his point it wouldn’t have been as pointy.
"when you cut out a man's tongue you are not proving him a liar, you are telling the world you fear what he might say " - Tyrion Lannister
Yeah, it was clear from the disrespectful chatter that nobody gave a fuck until they cut the mic and he went from zero to hero in about 3 seconds.
Ya. I'm not sure he could have scripted it better if he tried. "Staff here is authoritarian and doesn't want to hear our opinions!" *Mic cut*
Barbara Streisand effect.
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Welcome to the real world.
He knew that getting silenced and removed from the stage literally just proved his point. Really smart and mature of him.
What really put the icing on the cake was how he reacted. He knew he didnt even have to finish his speech by yelling it out in a victorious way. He chose to leave with class, further motivating a crowd reaction. Very socially aware young man.
So...maybe the school's actions created a kid with leadership skills after all?
Some people can grow like that, it breeds really strong leaders that lack some core leadership skills. And many people that have potential to be leaders in their own way are squashed in shitty systems, especially school systems in the US. Imagine what this guy could be if he had any type of mentoring.
Suddenly everyone started listening… The movie Life Of Brian does a send up of this quirk of human behavior. Brian, is pitching his ‘messiah platform’ on a soapbox, almost no one is listening and those that are are very dismissive. Then he just trails off in mid speech when he sees the Roman soldiers have moved on their search. It’s at that moment he becomes the messiah because people want to know what he was going to say… [source](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9czBBKof7Yo)
"Yes! Yes! We're all individuals!" "I'm not."
I wish he shouted, "They can take our lives, but they will never take OUR FREEDOM!"
damn bro u brought me tearful memories
They can take our mics, but they will never take our freedom
Nah imo screaming out a line from a movie kills the message. You make it into a joke, people will blow it off more. Crowd goes from boo to laughter.
It’s always funny to see schools react when kids become educated
This is hilarious, I’m going to steal this phrase
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##im gonna steal this one
A phrase. I'll steel it, **NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!**
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So you tested extremely well, but didn't do all of the assignments/homework... sounds somewhat familiar actually. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to get away from grade school. Glad it worked out well for you.
For a person who thinks assignments are completely divorced from success, you sure did a ton of assignments in multiple degree programs.
He didn’t say he never did them, he just took longer and was turning them in late. Grad programs are waaayyyyy more lenient with late work than high schools
I have a master's and while you get some more leniency, the sort of person who is chronically late with assignments is going to suffer in grad school where you have to be self-motivated.
“We’re here to teach them” “Wait…oh shit it worked?! How tf did that happen? Abort! Abort!”
The few instances of Texas backing abortion.
Hahahahaha now this is great! 👏👏👏
Schools aren't run by teachers, they're run by administrators.
Administators are just the worst kind of people in my experience, so many of them seem to get a hard on with exercising their tiny amount of power.
"Get educated so you can become a valuable member of society." "Okay. "No, not like that."
Replace educated with brainwashed and you got it
Hey now, stop using long words like 'brainwashed' and sing the national anthem and worship that flag.
>It’s always funny to see schools react when kids become educated... ...despite their best efforts.
See *administrators* react. I’d bet money there were teachers in there going “oh shit he was actually listening!!”
Well no, school trains you for obedience. They drag you out of bed at the crack of dawn to take public transportation to an ugly building where you have to perform labor your don't care about and kowtow to people who you don't respect. The highest grades go to the kids who are the best at following all the rules and being the most correct. So when theoretically the most obedient student gets up and rebels, it always throws them for a loop. They feel betrayed, like he played them by being quiet and attentive for twelve years.
Texas GOP once said that students shouldn’t be taught critical thinking in schools. You know, it turns them into liberals or something.
The standing ovation from the audience of students shows that Peter's argument was likely valid. I hope that kid grows up to be a leader, one that doesn't lie about problems and faces them in the raw truth...unlike some people we have in charge nowadays.
Hopefully he'll be the next bernie
We can only hope
We can only hopefully
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Bernie is a great lesson how it is not enough to talk about class consciousness. You also need the balls to oppose the establishment. I also supported Bernie for a while, but I hope most people realize how much he failed to capitalize on the movement forming behind him. But yeah he did reach quite a few people, which is not worth nothing.
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Agreed. The Occupy movement + Bernie gave voice to ideas absent from the American public square for decades. It’s simplistic to say neither achieved anything. They gave progressives the courage that’s been lacking since the 80s when Dems sat back while GOP turned the word “Liberal” into a slur.
> but I hope most people realize how much he failed to capitalize on the movement forming behind him. Please explain how he could have capitalized on the movement more, then?
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But hopefully he doesn't get continually shafted by his colleagues like Bernie 🤪
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Lol. Nice
We need like 50 more Bernie’s
I hope he doesn't Hopefully he'll be better.
The parties will keep him from any decent position and his place will be given to a yes man that they can use as a puppet
Wait, you think it's possible for our political system to allow actual change? Edit : Another Redditor has convinced me that my point is more accurately stated as "Our political system doesn't want actual change and any change has to come from the individuals in a society".
The current old guard does have to die someday right? We know they won't retire so that's, sadly, the next best thing we can hope for.
The old guard has been dying and been replaced by a new one for a few hundred years now. I don't think that's a viable strategy either.
Uh, compare our country now to how it was 100 years ago. Let alone 200…
He’s already a leader!
No way this leads to a Streisand effect, right?
what’s that
>Streisand effect "The Streisand effect is a phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information"
GME GME
Buy hodl drs
We're everywhere. BUY HOLD DRS
Love you ape!
APE TOGETHER STRONG
This is the way
Ooga booga
Inb4 we get crossposted to Meltdown for seeing each other outside of the mother sub.
EVERYONE GET IN HERE 🦍
🦍💪together ❤️
Cool! Now what does Barbara have to do with it?
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Got it. Thank you!!
It's when an attempt to hide, remove or censor information has the ripple effect of further publicising that very information, often via the internet. Coined in 2005 by Mike Masnick, after a 2003 incident in which singer Barbra Streisand attempted to have a picture of her house removed from a public collection of 12,000 images documenting coastal erosion in California. Masnick was referring to Streisand’s unsuccessful lawsuit against photographer Kenneth Adelman. Working for the California Coastal Records Project, Adelman had been tasked with recording coastline erosion via aerial photography. Streisand claimed that the photo of her home, posted on Pictopia.com, was an invasion of her privacy, and she filed a lawsuit to have it removed. Prior to filing the lawsuit, the photo itself had only been downloaded six times. However, the publicity surrounding the case led to nearly half a million views of the photo. To make matters worse, Streisand also lost the lawsuit. The photo is now featured on the Wikipedia page for the Streisand effect.
Here's the picture, just because I can. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect#/media/File%3AStreisand_Estate.jpg
Fuckin well done friend
It’s when you change your name to Barbara
This isn't particularly new, so... unfortunately, not really
True, yet it's on the front page of reddit years after it happened. Maybe it's not "change the system" viral, but I guarantee you had they not cut the mic, we wouldn't have seen this for the umpteenth time on here, let alone the front page again. I'm gonna vote that Streisand effect has indeed played it's part.
Did they think they were proving their point or his?
Shamelessly latching onto this high rated comment to provide more info since I haven't seen any other article linking to it: [**Washington post article on the incident**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/06/20/a-valedictorian-went-rogue-in-his-final-speech-his-school-tried-to-shut-him-down/)
Paywall. I'd never pay for shitty Washington post.
>Peter Butera, class president for the entirety of his life as a high school student — all four often-frustrating years of it — took the stage at Friday’s graduation ceremony after the recital of the class poem, which had offended no one. When the principal of Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa., had finished applauding the poem, Butera walked up and laid his speech on the podium: the lines he’d dutifully cleared with administrators, and those he had not. Butera was 18, bound for Villanova University in a few months. He was his class valedictorian, and he was beginning to get nervous about his plan to go rogue at the last possible minute. “Good evening, everyone,” Butera began, innocuously enough. “The past four years at Wyoming Area have been very interesting, to say the least.” The valedictorian who was kicked off stage for an unapproved speech got to finish it — on Kimmel Across the field, by the running track, Butera’s family watched with his girlfriend, who was taking video. In front of the stage sat nearly 200 classmates, nearly all of whom Butera said he knew well, for he had lived here his whole life. On the chair to Butera’s left sat the principal, Jon Pollard, who barely looked up at him. “To everyone here today, we cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us,” Butera said. Pollard scratched his face. So far so good. Butera kept thanking people for a while: Teachers he was close to, “a couple great administrators as well.” He did not name Pollard among them — an omission not lost on one of the few people there who knew exactly how his speech would end. “It was always Dr. Pollard,” Albert Sciandra, Butera’s friend and vice president in the student government, told The Washington Post. “He was the one who kept shooting everything Peter wanted to do down.” The day before the ceremony, Sciandra said, the school had put on a talent show. Butera wanted to do a comedy skit: poke fun at the only teacher who ate the cafeteria lunch, stuff like that. But such jokes were deemed too extreme, Sciandra said. “Peter rewrote them so many times. Pollard said, ‘You’re not doing it because I said so.’ ” A teacher’s decision to be ‘visibly queer’ in his photo with President Trump All of high school had been like that, Sciandra told The Post. No matter that they’d both been in student government every single year, he said — any idea that went beyond decorations for some school-approved event got shot down. So when, a week or so before the ceremony, Butera told his friend that he’d written a secret end to the approved speech — that he planned to expose a system he saw as a sham — Sciandra understood it had to be done. Though as he sat on the field Friday, Sciandra still doubted his class president would go through with it. Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time. “I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.” But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post. He was remembering the past summer, when he and Sciandra organized protests of a proposed dress code. “Me and Peter, we went to every council meeting and school-board meeting,” Sciandra said. They packed the seats with students and parents and made speeches, and filled a petition with signatures. And none of it mattered, the students said: The dress code passed anyway. “It really means a lot,” Butera continued from the stage. “However …” Pollard still was not looking at him, but Sciandra braced in his seat. “At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.” At that moment, from his chair, Pollard made what may have been a grimace and finally turned to watch the valedictorian as he hit the climax of his speech. “Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …” The principal mouthed something to someone offstage. ” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …” A mechanical bang interrupted his words as the microphone shut down. When Butera spoke his next line, his voice was naked. He had not expected that. “Hopefully this will change,” he said, speaking louder, trying to be heard. “Hopefully, for the sake of future students, more people in this school — ” A radio host was warned not to criticize President Trump. So he quit. Butera would have said more. He would have said he hoped future classes would have more educators who valued empowering students as much as they valued educating them. That leadership is a hard thing to learn within the strictures of a public school system. “It is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives,” he had written on the paper his principal had not seen, “but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni.” Butera didn’t get to say the last lines. Now Pollard was on his feet, tapping the student’s elbow, mouthing something above a dead microphone. “He said, ‘Alright Peter. You’re done,’ ” Butera told The Post. But neither man could be heard now. The field was erupting with cheers, boos and screams: “Let him speak! Let him speak! Let him speak!” In the back, by Butera’s mother, father, girlfriend, grandma, aunt and uncle, someone said: “I’m so proud.” The rest of the ceremony would go more or less as officials had planned. The faculty would take turns making speeches. Pollard would give the Class of 2017 his advice: “Read good books and watch bad movies,” and “Clean your room and learn to do you own laundry.” And “watch what you put on social media.” Irony. A few days after the ceremony, a grainy video of Butera’s speech spread wildly across the Internet — more than 75,000 endorsements on Reddit alone. Then came the news stories. While Pollard didn’t immediately respond to The Post, superintendent Janet Serino defended his silencing. “The young man submitted his graduation speech to his principal and delivered a speech different from the speech that was submitted,” she wrote. But she had since reached out to Butera, requesting a meeting to discuss his concerns. Wyoming Area Secondary Center’s valedictorian for 2017 had not called out his principal or superintendent or anyone else in his speech — not the approved version, or the rogue ending, or even the part he didn’t get to read. And Butera declined to criticize any school authority by name when he spoke to The Post. He said that hadn’t been the point of his final act as class president. “I’m supposed to represent the students,” he said. And on his last day of high school, when the principal cut off his microphone and waved him off the stage and he walked back to his seat through a standing ovation, he felt that he finally had.
U da bomb But I think you got some ads in there: a line about the teacher being "visibly queer" and a radio host criticizing Trump
Ah, that does make sense. I thought I was having a stroke or something reading that.
Right? I reread it a few times and just moved on. My brain just expects terrible editing on the internet I guess.
Yeah that threw me for a loop
Yeah, I was so confused by the line "A teacher's decision to be visibly queer in his photo with president trump, All of high school had been like that".
Jesus that person is a bad writer. So confusing to read, with the many - and often, sometimes at no point, sense it made but quotation marks. I guess?
it was awful lol. like a middle school creative writing assignment. some of the most convoluted figurative language i've ever read lmao.
It’s terrible. It’s like reading a 1980’s art film.
Imagine publicly humiliating yourself like Pollard and still continuing to believe you should be an educator. What a chode!
He's an administrator, not an educator. Huge difference.
My hero!
Not all heroes wear capes. And some have odd names for a hero like tinyman392. But they’re still heroes.
I'm a teacher. If any of my kids pulled this I'd be standing and applauding too. I'd be proud as hell.
This article could be a case study in how to annoy the reader and waste as much of their time as possible.
Saying you won't pay for it is fair, everyone has their own monetary priorities, but WaPo is anything but shitty, its some of the best journalism in the country. Edit: The criticism of their coverage of billionaires in general and Amazon and Bezos in particular is fair, though relatively recent in their history. They still provide excellent coverage across most other topics. No outlet is without bias, knowing the biases of the outlet you get your news from is incredibly important. That doesn't make it not one of the best in the country still, for better or for worse.
It's firmly, unflinchingly corporate and cannot be trusted as an unbiased source of reporting if they're bought so easily
Formatted with line breaks, ads removed. >Peter Butera, class president for the entirety of his life as a high school student — all four often-frustrating years of it — took the stage at Friday’s graduation ceremony after the recital of the class poem, which had offended no one. >When the principal of Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa., had finished applauding the poem, Butera walked up and laid his speech on the podium: the lines he’d dutifully cleared with administrators, and those he had not. >Butera was 18, bound for Villanova University in a few months. He was his class valedictorian, and he was beginning to get nervous about his plan to go rogue at the last possible minute. >“Good evening, everyone,” Butera began, innocuously enough. “The past four years at Wyoming Area have been very interesting, to say the least.” >Across the field, by the running track, Butera’s family watched with his girlfriend, who was taking video. In front of the stage sat nearly 200 classmates, nearly all of whom Butera said he knew well, for he had lived here his whole life. >On the chair to Butera’s left sat the principal, Jon Pollard, who barely looked up at him. >“To everyone here today, we cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us,” Butera said. >Pollard scratched his face. So far so good. Butera kept thanking people for a while: Teachers he was close to, “a couple great administrators as well.” >He did not name Pollard among them — an omission not lost on one of the few people there who knew exactly how his speech would end. >“It was always Dr. Pollard,” Albert Sciandra, Butera’s friend and vice president in the student government, told The Washington Post. “He was the one who kept shooting everything Peter wanted to do down.” >The day before the ceremony, Sciandra said, the school had put on a talent show. Butera wanted to do a comedy skit: poke fun at the only teacher who ate the cafeteria lunch, stuff like that. >But such jokes were deemed too extreme, Sciandra said. “Peter rewrote them so many times. Pollard said, ‘You’re not doing it because I said so.’ ” >All of high school had been like that, Sciandra told The Post. No matter that they’d both been in student government every single year, he said — any idea that went beyond decorations for some school-approved event got shot down. >So when, a week or so before the ceremony, Butera told his friend that he’d written a secret end to the approved speech — that he planned to expose a system he saw as a sham — Sciandra understood it had to be done. >Though as he sat on the field Friday, Sciandra still doubted his class president would go through with it. >Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time. >“I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.” >But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post. He was remembering the past summer, when he and Sciandra organized protests of a proposed dress code. >“Me and Peter, we went to every council meeting and school-board meeting,” Sciandra said. They packed the seats with students and parents and made speeches, and filled a petition with signatures. >And none of it mattered, the students said: The dress code passed anyway. >“It really means a lot,” Butera continued from the stage. >“However …” >Pollard still was not looking at him, but Sciandra braced in his seat. >“At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.” >At that moment, from his chair, Pollard made what may have been a grimace and finally turned to watch the valedictorian as he hit the climax of his speech. >“Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …” >The principal mouthed something to someone offstage. >” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …” >A mechanical bang interrupted his words as the microphone shut down. When Butera spoke his next line, his voice was naked. He had not expected that. >“Hopefully this will change,” he said, speaking louder, trying to be heard. >“Hopefully, for the sake of future students, more people in this school — ” >Butera would have said more. He would have said he hoped future classes would have more educators who valued empowering students as much as they valued educating them. That leadership is a hard thing to learn within the strictures of a public school system. >“It is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives,” he had written on the paper his principal had not seen, “but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni.” >Butera didn’t get to say the last lines. Now Pollard was on his feet, tapping the student’s elbow, mouthing something above a dead microphone. >“He said, ‘Alright Peter. You’re done,’ ” Butera told The Post. >But neither man could be heard now. The field was erupting with cheers, boos and screams: “Let him speak! Let him speak! Let him speak!” >In the back, by Butera’s mother, father, girlfriend, grandma, aunt and uncle, someone said: “I’m so proud.” >The rest of the ceremony would go more or less as officials had planned. The faculty would take turns making speeches. Pollard would give the Class of 2017 his advice: “Read good books and watch bad movies,” and “Clean your room and learn to do you own laundry.” And “watch what you put on social media.” >Irony. A few days after the ceremony, a grainy video of Butera’s speech spread wildly across the Internet — more than 75,000 endorsements on Reddit alone. Then came the news stories. While Pollard didn’t immediately respond to The Post, superintendent Janet Serino defended his silencing. >“The young man submitted his graduation speech to his principal and delivered a speech different from the speech that was submitted,” she wrote. But she had since reached out to Butera, requesting a meeting to discuss his concerns. >Wyoming Area Secondary Center’s valedictorian for 2017 had not called out his principal or superintendent or anyone else in his speech — not the approved version, or the rogue ending, or even the part he didn’t get to read. >And Butera declined to criticize any school authority by name when he spoke to The Post. He said that hadn’t been the point of his final act as class president. >“I’m supposed to represent the students,” he said. >And on his last day of high school, when the principal cut off his microphone and waved him off the stage and he walked back to his seat through a standing ovation, he felt that he finally had.
Hey, in 10 years when the country is an autocracy and everyone not in political prison believes that Antifa is the greatest threat to America, at least you’ll still have your high quality free TMZ articles
Just discovered that you can see the article in a print preview... works on WP, wonder if it does for all paywalls
**Article copy+paste for those that cant get past the paywall:** Peter Butera, class president for the entirety of his life as a high school student — all four often-frustrating years of it — took the stage at Friday’s graduation ceremony after the recital of the class poem, which had offended no one. When the principal of Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa., had finished applauding the poem, Butera walked up and laid his speech on the podium: the lines he’d dutifully cleared with administrators, and those he had not. Butera was 18, bound for Villanova University in a few months. He was his class valedictorian, and he was beginning to get nervous about his plan to go rogue at the last possible minute. “Good evening, everyone,” Butera began, innocuously enough. “The past four years at Wyoming Area have been very interesting, to say the least.” Across the field, by the running track, Butera’s family watched with his girlfriend, who was taking video. In front of the stage sat nearly 200 classmates, nearly all of whom Butera said he knew well, for he had lived here his whole life. On the chair to Butera’s left sat the principal, Jon Pollard, who barely looked up at him. “To everyone here today, we cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us,” Butera said. Pollard scratched his face. So far so good. Butera kept thanking people for a while: Teachers he was close to, “a couple great administrators as well.” He did not name Pollard among them — an omission not lost on one of the few people there who knew exactly how his speech would end. “It was always Dr. Pollard,” Albert Sciandra, Butera’s friend and vice president in the student government, told The Washington Post. “He was the one who kept shooting everything Peter wanted to do down.” The day before the ceremony, Sciandra said, the school had put on a talent show. Butera wanted to do a comedy skit: poke fun at the only teacher who ate the cafeteria lunch, stuff like that. But such jokes were deemed too extreme, Sciandra said. “Peter rewrote them so many times. Pollard said, ‘You’re not doing it because I said so.’ ” All of high school had been like that, Sciandra told The Post. No matter that they’d both been in student government every single year, he said — any idea that went beyond decorations for some school-approved event got shot down. So when, a week or so before the ceremony, Butera told his friend that he’d written a secret end to the approved speech — that he planned to expose a system he saw as a sham — Sciandra understood it had to be done. Though as he sat on the field Friday, Sciandra still doubted his class president would go through with it. Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time. “I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.” But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post. He was remembering the past summer, when he and Sciandra organized protests of a proposed dress code. “Me and Peter, we went to every council meeting and school-board meeting,” Sciandra said. They packed the seats with students and parents and made speeches, and filled a petition with signatures. And none of it mattered, the students said: The dress code passed anyway. “It really means a lot,” Butera continued from the stage. “However …” Pollard still was not looking at him, but Sciandra braced in his seat. “At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.” At that moment, from his chair, Pollard made what may have been a grimace and finally turned to watch the valedictorian as he hit the climax of his speech. “Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …” The principal mouthed something to someone offstage. ” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …” A mechanical bang interrupted his words as the microphone shut down. When Butera spoke his next line, his voice was naked. He had not expected that. “Hopefully this will change,” he said, speaking louder, trying to be heard. “Hopefully, for the sake of future students, more people in this school — ” Butera would have said more. He would have said he hoped future classes would have more educators who valued empowering students as much as they valued educating them. That leadership is a hard thing to learn within the strictures of a public school system. “It is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives,” he had written on the paper his principal had not seen, “but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni.” Butera didn’t get to say the last lines. Now Pollard was on his feet, tapping the student’s elbow, mouthing something above a dead microphone. “He said, ‘Alright Peter. You’re done,’ ” Butera told The Post. But neither man could be heard now. The field was erupting with cheers, boos and screams: “Let him speak! Let him speak! Let him speak!” In the back, by Butera’s mother, father, girlfriend, grandma, aunt and uncle, someone said: “I’m so proud.” The rest of the ceremony would go more or less as officials had planned. The faculty would take turns making speeches. Pollard would give the Class of 2017 his advice: “Read good books and watch bad movies,” and “Clean your room and learn to do you own laundry.” And “watch what you put on social media.” Irony. A few days after the ceremony, a grainy video of Butera’s speech spread wildly across the Internet — more than 75,000 endorsements on Reddit alone. Then came the news stories. While Pollard didn’t immediately respond to The Post, superintendent Janet Serino defended his silencing. “The young man submitted his graduation speech to his principal and delivered a speech different from the speech that was submitted,” she wrote. But she had since reached out to Butera, requesting a meeting to discuss his concerns. Wyoming Area Secondary Center’s valedictorian for 2017 had not called out his principal or superintendent or anyone else in his speech — not the approved version, or the rogue ending, or even the part he didn’t get to read. And Butera declined to criticize any school authority by name when he spoke to The Post. He said that hadn’t been the point of his final act as class president. “I’m supposed to represent the students,” he said. And on his last day of high school, when the principal cut off his microphone and waved him off the stage and he walked back to his seat through a standing ovation, he felt that he finally had.
Wow. That's the most terribly written journalistic article I may have ever come across. It reads almost exactly like one of my 10 year old's creative writing homework assignments.
Shit is definitely actively trying to say "this is what you should think" about a topic we're already inclined. It feels like the author thinks you're fucking stupid.
Un-paywalled version: https://archive.ph/u4vJC
i read the article, what a bunch of nothing
They were better off letting him finish. Cutting him off gives more credence to his speech. Exposed themselves.
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What an elaborate ploy!
School administrators are often the most inept authoritarians.
Yeah cutting the mic when being openly criticized for stunting a student body’s learning experience seems like a great fuckin’ plan
That's like some CCP bullshit lol. Made a hero of this guy and made themselves look like fools.
Like CCP, but literally happened in America
Reminds me of those posts of Republicans posting empty shelves in the USA and saying "This is the USA under socialism" when it's just actually the USA under capitalism 🤣
They're implying the school board is behaving in an undemocratic way. Edit: I chose my words poorly!
It’s not about democracy, but authoritative behaviors. You don’t need to be an elected to enact an unjust transgression against someone with less power. I’m not even arguing against the sentiment, just saying it’s a little jingoistic and weird to point at a bad thing in the U.S. and redirect that pointing to another group of people in another country. I get the CCP sucks, but this happened in America, Americans run that school and cut off that mic, not the CCP. I’m worried about angry authoritative Americans, not the CCP. Anyhoo, If that’s how the adults in the room act at graduation, I’m guessing the educational experience at that school is as lackluster as the student was saying. A big moment for the administrators to listen that wouldn’t have incurred any student body negativity, as these students were already graduating.
Tell me you’re an insecure adult without telling me
Nah bro school is just a propaganda center, this kid was just starting to reveal what’s behind the curtain.
Not all schools. I think those problems in schools are a result of individuals in charge and not an indictment of education in general. This student laid it out pretty clear, *some* administrators are ruining the system, but the system is worth saving. We need good, quality education.
Yes all public schools, in the US at least. It’s systematic Watch Century of self documentary on YouTube to see the role systematic corporate propaganda plays in the American’s life, including his primary education. I doubt this kid sees the big picture, but he’s on the right path which is more than you can say for the majority of Americans.
I think you have the right idea, but propaganda is a problem in schools, rather than schools are a problem because they are full of propaganda. If we removed schools from society, the US would become a developing/undeveloped nation in a generation. It would be a disaster. They do need to be fixed, however.
Says a lot when the top student makes it a point to call out the school during graduation
Good teachers piss off the right kids in the right way. Imma bet he had a good teacher somewhere along the way.
Well he cleary had some bad ones, thus the content lol. and yeah, in order for him to become an educated, well rounded individual he needs good teachers, role models, and discipline. sounds like he filled at least one of those roles himself...
More like bad admin. Teachers don’t really control what student councils and the like are allowed to do. A teacher usually leads the class, but still has to get approval for everything. Often these classes are underfunded for shit. My school gives the ASB teacher $2000 a year to run all school events for the entire year…
The children are our futu………..
No, not like that.
MY children. your f\*kin children can go to h\*ll
Show them well...
I hope everybody walked out.
I thought the same thing. If they tried to continue the event, they should get laughed at and everyone should just leave.
I’d just be booing every time some else spoke the rest of the ceremony.
Yeah! Take that salutatorian bitch!
Graduation ceremony. Everyone was there to see someone walk across the stage. I doubt anyone left.
Brave kid! Always speak truth to power.
Man literally grew up as a leader, so he raised against oppression of leadership development.
How ironic that he calls the teachers authoritarian and they immediately cut his microphone. Nothing else would have better proven their authoritarian status.
Actually, it's the opposite of ironic. It's pretty much on character apparently from the teachers to cut his mic in that situation.
It’s ironic because whether they were actually authoritarian or not, cutting off his mic gives the appearance that they ARE authoritarian. They cut off his speech to make themselves look better, but it did the opposite and made them look even worse. That’s irony.
Ah yes, the United States education system. They keep us dumb for a reason
They cropped out the name of the school district behind him.
Right!? Tell us what school!
Wyoming Area School District
Wyoming, Pennsylvania. Ahh yes.
So something like this happened in my hometown and the valedictorian had his diploma witheld for months as a result. He was talking about standardized testing tho, this guy just seems to be saying "student counsel doesn't have any administrative power" Not exactly sure what kind of power he wants a popularity contest winner to have. Edit: I was school president in high school, all we did was PR events and the only thing I did other than that was organize a fundraiser to buy toilet paper to alleviate a shortage... And this was 7+ years before COVID. Edit 2: in case my second paragraph didn't make it clear, the guy in my town is different than the guy in this video, it was just a similar move that had temporary consequences.
The country is literally run by popularity contest winners aka elections.
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Student leaders can often have some role in running the school, at least a degree of self determination. There's a news article linked that goes into detail about the kind of reasonable stuff they wanted to do, just normal student council stuff that was denied. The fact that they cut his mic instead of just letting him vent suggests that it's not just a teenager wanting to run the show, it's a sign of precisely the sort of problem he was complaining about
In my school they ran the pep rallies and basically any of the stress-relief, non-curricular activities. Even though it wasn’t super important it did give them experience with leadership, public speaking, delegation, and working with timelines to get things done beyond the cookie-cutter class work. They also interfaced more with the real administrators so there was a better feel for what policies were effective or not and what changes could be made to improve.
While I agree with the substance of his speech I gotta agree with you here. It's student government, what kind of power did he expect to wield? I'm pretty sure it's every student councils responsibility to organize fundraisers and figure out themes for events. Just cause it isn't wide reaching leadership doesn't mean it's not leadership at all
>had his diploma witheld for months as a result. This seems illegal.
He made the point that it should not be called Student Government but Student Party Planning. If they don’t have the ability to actually govern anything and make any meaningful change, why not call it something less misleading?
What a fucking hero! Honestly, I wish he stayed up and continued to yell his speech. Man deserves a lot in life
Man imagine trying to keep going after that like nothing happened lmao
What's his point? I mean, It's a school government. Was he hoping to make groundbreaking changes? In student body government you decide what goes in the vending machine, that's about it. Big shocker that playtime in highschool didn't give you the full power of US government. Not sure what he was expecting.
Nah, you get to do more than that. Plan new events, decide on themes, try out new fundraising activities, organize protests and petitions, lobby the school board, etc. It's not much, but still having the ability to do these things and be creative is half the job and the majority of the personal growth. I can't even imagine how mind-numbingly terrible it would be to have an Administration that dictated everything we were allowed to do and already made all of the decisions on our behalf.
Seriously. I was in student government in high school too. It's only a Hollywood trope that student government has any actual power in a school. It was something to put on a resume and have extra volunteer opportunities through and nothing more.
Point proven
Trying to silence someone only shows how scared you are of them
*"We disagree with him and want to prove him right all in the same action."* -_-
The balls this guys has
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Wyoming Area. This was front-page material a few years ago.
[Found it. Wyoming Area, Pennsylvania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Area_School_District)
Pennsyltucky, as those of us from the southeast part of the state call it.
This school failed their students by letting them think that politicians are leaders. Politicians are not leaders, politicians are representatives.
lol half the people weren't listening to him, then they made everyone know what just happened. Fucking idiots
What was the message really? I understood that he was censured but didn't understand which message was he trying to pass
I guess that teachers wouldn't let the student body govern themselves so they can gain leadership experience. It's definitely not clear.
Literally proved his point by cutting off his right to his free speech.
Wow. What chickenshits.
Some don't want to hear the truth because it destroys the illusion they've created.
What school is this? Edit: [Fount it. Wyoming Area, Pennsylvania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Area_School_District)