Censorship at John Jay's "Open Mic Night."

To the students and teachers of John Jay High School:

On Friday, March 2nd, at an "open mic night" sponsored by Reflections, our school's literary magazine, three junior girls were suspended when they ignored the advice of the administration and decided to use the word "vagina" in their reading anyway. They used the word only once. The word, for those you who are unaware, refers to a body part that, I am quite certain, at least half of those in the room had that night, and all in the room, at least in passing, had heard of before.

A democratic society depends on an electorate educated in more than integral calculus. John Jay High School has an obligation, paramount among others, to impress upon its students, the future leaders of our nation, the tenants of a healthy, free society: fairness in deliberation, equality, justice, respect for others and the right to dissent.

By that standard, I believe John Jay High School has failed.

As a school system, we must stand by the clear, unequivocal declaration that sex is neither wicked nor sinful. The suppression of sexual knowledge is not only an intellectually repressive practice, but also the cause of a great deal of human unhappiness. Knowledge based on deception and filtration is not knowledge at all. And I cannot support a decision by the school's administration to sponsor ignorance – especially the breed of ignorance that debases a topic, such as sex, that is so vitally important.

From what I gathered, the intent of the students' reading – an excerpt from the award-winning play "The Vagina Monologues," a play I saw just one week ago – was to celebrate femininity, what for so long has been seen as frail and inferior, or lascivious and sinful. The students uttered the word not as an admission but as a declaration: no longer should a word so natural and important be shrouded in a mist of ignorance and irrationality.

It is the height of irony that by censoring this word, and by punishing those who said it, the administration has compounded the mist of ignorance and irrationality that the word set out to dispel in the first place.

As I listened to the various voices and words of my peers and teachers at the "open mic night," I realized that my purpose in being there, all of our purposes, was to celebrate the individual's voice. Perhaps it is true, as I very much believe it is, that Mr. Cass and Ms. Kor, by making the decision to suspend the girls for their mentioning of an anatomical structure, were attending not to their own personal beliefs, but to those of a vocal minority in the community. However, by capitulating to the simplemindedness and bigotry of a few, and consenting to suppress the free exchange of literary and important ideas, the administration was undermining the most basic principles of the "open mic" that night and of the writers who were willing to share their words.

Even if you are not sympathetic to the girls' use of the word "vagina," or even the purposes of their reading, I hope and trust that you are sympathetic to the premise that human prosperity depends on the expression of a diverse array of ideas, and that in an educational institution we are entitled to hear these ideas.

What is needed now is not less speech, but more. These girls took a great risk in defending their convictions. I urge you to contact the administration saying that you do not support its decision to punish girls who had the integrity to stand up for their beliefs – that in a school system, information ought to be open and diverse, and ignorance combated.