I would like to take this opportunity to say a word in defense of Victoria Dean, since even those who voted against asking for her resignation from the Marlboro K-8 School District Board of Education did not seem to support her right to strongly disagree with the idea of closing Marlboro’s schools for the Chinese New Year.
I do not know Mrs. Dean, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I did telephone her to ask that she not resign. My reason for admitting this at the outset is that, according to the harsh invective hurled at Mrs. Dean at both the March 10 and March 17 board meetings, there are some really nasty people out there who I expect will be digging around to see if Mrs. Dean and I are old buddies. FYI, we are not.
Mrs. Dean’s sin, it seems, was her comment that closing the schools for the Chinese New Year “would be opening a Pandora’s box,” a fact which is not difficult to believe. Why not the Russian New Year or the many Muslim holidays?
Mrs. Dean really stepped into it, however, when she copied onto her Facebook page an article about the Connecticut school district that closed the schools for a Muslim holiday. This was just too much for the speech police of Marlboro.
To my amazement, I watched two or three men at the March 10 meeting hurl the kind of abuse at Mrs. Dean that had no place at a board meeting. When they were finished, one of the board members took up where they left off.
I also understand that Mayor Jonathan Hornik was at this meeting and I certainly would have expected he, in his role as a top political figure, would have come to Mrs. Dean’s defense, if only to tell these people they were out of order. The mayor remained silent.
In reading the article in the News Transcript about the March 17 board meeting, it mentions two indignant high school students who were exasperated with the board for not doing more to chastise Mrs. Dean.
One of them, Mohammed Elrais, went so far as to make the veiled threat that if the board did nothing, action would be taken at the state level. Let me point out to this young fellow that as he grows up, he will find that not everyone will bend to his will and there will be many times that his will will not be done.
Unfortunately, political correctness has run amok, when freedom of speech is only allowed for certain people. I congratulate Mrs. Dean, who maintained a dignified attitude while being bombarded with the most absurd sniveling from a group of boorish malcontents.
Jacquelin Duffy
Marlboro