Context: Why does OPRF HS need to adopt a High School form of the Kalven Report? Look no further than the Public Comments and the OPRF Board Response at the 2/8/2024 OPRF HS Board meeting. 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-UAxZ9GNF8 (start watching at the 1hour, 4 minute & 34 second time stamp) 

Over the last several years, schools across the country have had to respond to the impact that Covid 19, George Floyd, and a war in the Middle East has had on their students and their school communities more broadly. Some schools responded better than others.  Successful schools somehow brought their communities together. Unsuccessful ones divided their communities further while creating tension, unease, and fear. 

Because OPRF HS will undoubtedly face another crisis sometime in the future, it should draft, discuss and commit to a Controversial Issues Policy Statement. OPRF should look to the University of Chicago for guidance and wisdom.  Some part of OPRF's new policy should resemble the Kalven Report which includes the following language:

"To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.”

"Since the university is a community only for these limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted."

In addition to the Kalven Report, OPRF HS should review the University of Chicago's commitment to Free Speech and modify the language, enabling it to work within a high school setting. 

The time is obviously now for OPRF HS to act on behalf of our students, teachers, and our community.  High Schools should be a place of learning and knowledge transfer; academically preparing students to make their impact on the world. It should not be a place or platform that pressures students, teachers, administrators, staff, and the community, intentionally or not, to pick sides on the controversial issue of the day.  As the adage goes, OPRF should not teach kids what to think, but how to think critically.

If OPRF does not act,  it runs the risk of constantly reacting poorly to crisis, after crisis, after crisis. Our Board has a wonderful opportunity to make a statement and to be leaders in the nation in this area for high schools. We are hopeful the OPRF Board will take their responsibility of student safety and academic curiosity seriously enough to take action.

We, the undersigned, are asking OPRF HS to draft, discuss and adopt some form of the Kalven Report in school year 23-24, inclusive of language on free speech and diversity of thought. 

Thank you for your consideration.

Link to a specific and recent OPRF article regarding this broader challenge: https://www.oakpark.com/2023/08/22/a-schools-purpose/

Link to The University of Chicago Kalven Report: https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/KalvenRprt_0.pdf

Link to article on the usefulness of such a doctrine: https://www.thefire.org/news/wisdom-university-chicagos-kalven-report

Link to The University of Chicago Free Speech Principles: https://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/