Outrage at New Mexico attacks on student free speech

Issue 

BY BUSTER SOUTHERLY

NEW MEXICO — Bill Nevins remains suspended from his teaching job at the Rio Rancho High School (RRHS), and the school's student Poetry Slam Team and Writers Club, which Nevins coached, has been disbanded.

Nevins, who writes regularly for Green Left Weekly on cultural issues, was suspended on March 17 soon after a member of the poetry team read an anti-war poem — "Revolution X" — over the school's closed-circuit TV system.

Nevins has expressed "sadness that the Rio Rancho student poets did not participate in the recent April 12 annual Jimmy Santiago Baca Youth Slam Poetry Contest in Albuquerque", an event for which they have been training.

Despite Nevins receiving on April 25 a written evaluation which noted his creative teaching, his skills in addressing diversity and his success in working with both students and faculty, he also received a request from RRHS principal Gary Tripp that Nevins resign.

Nevins has not resigned, and has asked the state teachers' union for support. He also has requested support from the American Civil Liberties Union (messages urging that the ACLU support Nevins can be sent to its New Mexico director, Peter Simonson, at <aclunm@swcp.com>).

Involving both Nevins' right as a teacher to foster and encourage free expression by students, and the students' own rights to express themselves via performance poetry, the case has drawn national and international attention, all so far ignored by the Rio Rancho School District (<district@rrdo.rrps.k12.nm.us>), the RR School Board (<schoolboard@rrdo.rrps.k12.nm.us>) and Tripp. Poets and teachers across the United States have rallied to this case, sending Nevins dozens of emails, phone calls and letters in recent weeks.

US Poet Laureate Billy Collins has expressed his sympathy and stated that he is "looking into the matter". Famed feminist and epic poet Sharon Doubiago has linked the Nevins/Rio Rancho poetry case to her vigorous email campaign of information on the Iraq war and US policy generally, and the widely read Portside listserve has publicised the case. The number of protest emails being sent to the NM governor's web site has prompted complaints from the lieutenant governor's office.

The April 29 issue of the US national publication Education Week (<http://www.edweek.org>) features a detailed examination of Nevins' case.

Why would a US public school district behave in this way? Rio Rancho School District and its high schools, RRHS (the largest in New Mexico) and Independence High, were established in the late 1990s with major funding from Intel Corporation, the largest employer in Rio Rancho, a relatively new city located north-west of Albuquerque. Reports in the Albuquerque Journal and Tribune cited RRHS principal Tripp as stating that he intends to ask Intel Corp and the Bank of America for guidance in addressing what he identifies as "racial conflict" problems at RRHS.

Intel Corp's New Mexico operations, particularly their impact on the environment, have come under intense critical scrutiny from the South West Organising Project (<http://www.swop.net>) and other activists. It remains a matter of interest what relationship exists between the suppression of teacher and student expression at RRHS and the philosophy of Intel Corp.

According to President George Bush's policy, there is to be "no child left behind" in education. Many observers would say that at the Intel-influenced Rio Rancho School District in New Mexico, many creative and brave students are being "left behind" as their school poetry team and their writing and speaking efforts are suppressed or discouraged.

From Green Left Weekly, May 7, 2003.
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