A woman identified as a teacher removed a memorial to Charlie Kirk in front of Villa Park High School – less than two hours after students had created it. The teacher removed the memorial and deposited the collected items in a dumpster off-camus.
Villa Park High School is part of the Orange Unified School District (OUSD), and recently-appointed Superindent Rachel H. Monárrez said the district is looking into the matter.
Monarrez said the district had no prior knowledge of the memorial being set up. However, the students who created it placed it in front of the school at the suggestion of one of the school’s administrators, according to the LA Times:
The next morning, before school, three students brought bouquets and notes and added them to an unrelated memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The 9/11 memorial had been set up at an outdoor amphitheater inside the campus.
An administrator suggested that the Kirk memorial be moved to the public sidewalk in front of school, noting that the 9/11 memorial was about to be taken down. The students agreed, in part, they said, because their memorial to Kirk would be more visible out in front.
The next morning, before school, three students brought bouquets and notes and added them to an unrelated memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The 9/11 memorial had been set up at an outdoor amphitheater inside the campus.
An administrator suggested that the Kirk memorial be moved to the public sidewalk in front of school, noting that the 9/11 memorial was about to be taken down. The students agreed, in part, they said, because their memorial to Kirk would be more visible out in front.
The school bell rang at 8:30 a.m. and the students were off to class.
But later that morning, around 10 a.m., they received texts that the memorial had been taken down. A parent, they said, took a picture of a woman removing the materials and saw the woman put the materials in her car.
Here are photos of the memorial being removed:
Both current and former students view this as censorship of conservative student activism, including Alex Tran, a conservative activist who was VPHS’s student representative on the OUSD Board of Education and graduated from the school this June.
“I believe it is vandalism” and a violation of students’ right to free speech,” Tran told the Times. Tran is beginning college at UC Davis.
“The removal of the memorial was not behavior that was condoned,” Monárrez told the Times. “This is about the behavior. We’re really trying to be a district that gets past these cultural wars and really stays focused on children and educational outcomes for them.”
