By John Klar
Events in a local Vermont school reveal the intensity of government social justice indoctrination of students and their community undertaken by the public school system and so-called liberal actors. Students and parents who do not readily adhere to the woke mantra are targeted and shamed, and this is both initiated and maintained by governmental entities.
Here is the background:
In Vermont’s South Royalton school district, a school board member last year voted against displaying a “Pride” flag at the school, due to a genuine concern that it was unconstitutional favoritism of one message that would require the school to fly other flags in the future. (This view was affirmed in 2022 by a unanimous United States Supreme Court in Shurtleff v. Boston.) This school board member’s sixth-grade daughter was ruthlessly bullied by other students.
Meanwhile, another school board member, Shannon Morrill Tutunjian, is passionately “pro-trans” and has taken an unequivocal stance regarding the nearby Randolph Union High School dispute over a “girl” with male genitalia insisting on changing in the girls’ locker room. In posts on Facebook, community members who question the changing room policy or dare label children “boys and girls” have been condemned.
Tutunjian is also referred to as Shannon Morrill-Cornelius on the White River Unified School Board website. Some time this fall before October 24 (the post has been deleted), the following Facebook comment was directed at Tutunjian:
The school board is not mandated to have boys and girls changing together, they have alternatives and options. The school board has chosen this policy and owns it. You do have other options such as providing a separate space for transgendered students. You should be considering the safety and comfort of all students.
This statement and similar questions infuriated Shannon Morrill Tutunjian, who posted these responses:
You … are obviously a miserable lonely old Trumper[.] … If you’d like to speak to me again, you can do so at the public board meetings. You won’t be effective in changing anything, but stop in anyway. You can see what grownups do while we’re actually building community instead of tearing it apart.
It’s so CUTE how you keep going back to “boys and girls.” HATE SPEECH, refusing to use the term transgender female or transgender male. “Boys and girls” are not the topic here.
I am SO over giving a f— what the Trumpy white boys in this town think of me. I’m calling it out. Then again, getting to this level of no f—- left to give is usually how women get burned at the stake. Bring it. #IAmaWitch.
The mother of the girl who was bullied for her father’s (constitutionally correct) objection to flying the gay pride flag challenged Tutunjian for the extremism of her comments, filing a conflict of interest complaint with the school board. In response, Tutunjian posted this:
FACTS
Any member of the school board … can make public comment on their personal time under the first amendment. … Your only recourse is to vote against the board member in the next election. …
The SU and the school board itself have no power to “punish” or remove a sitting member of the board. …
Sincerely, a gender-queer lover of the bill of rights, the rainbow flag, and amplifying BI-POC and LGTBQIA voices.
School non-discrimination provisions provide that the White River Valley Supervisory Union and its member school districts do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), ancestry, national origin, place of birth, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, political affiliation or marital status.
“Employees” are defined to include school board members. Shannon’s anti-white, anti-male, anti-political affiliation comments against “Trumpy white boys” may not impact admission or school access, but they certainly are discriminatory comments made by a public employee and are arguably harassment. However, a conflict of interest complaint was rejected by both school boards upon which Tutunjian sits.
This is an odd implementation of the Bill of Rights.
A nearby school principal was summarily fired in 2020 for questioning the BLM movement; a soccer coach who “misgendered” the male student in the girls’ locker room was fired; an eight-year-old was disciplined for referring to a girl as “she”; a high school student was fired as a lifeguard for questioning CRT; a visiting author was silenced from speaking at Middlebury College, as was writer Charles Murray; the Vermont Senate considered disciplining a Republican senator for allegedly “doxxing” a schoolteacher by sharing his public email address.
Perhaps worst of all, the girls who expressed reservations about being forced to change in front of a male were subjected to scorn and abuse by other students, Vermont media, and the school administration for daring to object. The school also prohibited students from claiming “there are only two genders,” from using Chick-fil-A for a fundraiser, and for chanting “Let’s Go Brandon!”
Vermont government institutions are engaging in the selective prosecution of speech deemed objectionable by stifling woke ideology, while reinforcing the objectionable, crude attacks of social justice warriors like Shannon Morrill Tutunjian. So much for tolerance by the left.
Shannon Morrill Tutnujian displays a meme on her Facebook page from “Millennials for Bernie” that sums up her current display:
Good to see we have moved from “the liberals are pussies who wouldn’t stand a chance in war” to “the liberals are coming to kill us all with their violent mobs full of women being impolite.”
Being impolite is just one virtue the New Left signals. Compelling young girls to get naked in front of males, and bullying children whose fathers constitutionally object to partisan banners, are additional “virtues.”
But shh…don’t ask any questions.
Categories: Education
Freedom-minded inhabitants of the US should appreciate that there are leftist extremists like Shannon Morrill Tutunjian who actually publicize their own hypocrisy regarding racism and other biases and lay bare for all to see the true hatred they harbor for the principles and rights embodied in the US Constitution. A leftist is defined as someone who regards the US Constitution as an impediment to social progress.
The hatred this person has for the very document and principles that guaranty this person the freedom to do as she has done, to speak, hate and write as she chooses is indeed hypocrisy at it’s apex. Her right to call you or I a ‘Trumpy white boy’ is fine with me, in fact I encourage it. I have and will defend her right to free speech, as well as all the other constitutional guarantees our founders set forth in the US and Vermont constitutions. It is rather troubling that her actions and speech indicate that she wants you and I gone, removed from her view and by law unable to exercise the same freedom she demands. And that she was able to convince others to elect her to school board. I’ll even wager she has a ‘coexist’ bumper sticker. A product of generations of liberalism and socialist indoctrination.
That the current gender madness is almost entirely driven by white, liberal women is an unignorable reality. Mob hysterics are always driven by women, as they are more susceptible to social contagion, and men go along with it because they instinctively want to protect them. From the Ancient Greeks and harpies & maenads, to Medieval & American witch hysterias, to lynchings, and no small role in China’s Cultural Revolution and the death of tens of millions. Impolite women are far from the helpless victims they’d like to pretend they are, and they will apparently even sacrifice their daughters, or at least, sacrifice someone else’s, upon the altar of virtue.
I recall the pink hats marching in droves on DC awhile back. Now it’s the trans; making demands that they be treated equally; like petulant children; another ‘divide and conquer strategy’ aimed at disenfranchising (straight) youth.
Again, we are subjected to all this because we’ve agreed to indenture ourselves by letting them use our tax money to pay for one EXCLUSIVE schooling provider run by the government…the public school system. There’s no a la cart attention to what citizens might want…what’s offered is what you get…strang as it is. Trying to convince whoever is in power to stop doing something or do something different is a thankless task; like and endless theological debate. DISENGAGE! We need too be emancipated from thiis mess. The conficated funds need to stop going to organizations. They need to go directly to families so they can re-empower themselves as the educators of their kids. Teachers have skills. Let families seek them out in the marketplace to get what they want.
That is one angry trans…………….
Thank you Mr. Klar. Not only do they walk (crawl) among us, they are parasites that in this case, use taxes to bleed money from others to spread their beliefs. (indoctrinate children)
I see more and more reasons every day to home school their children or form home school cooperatives
Un-said message from Tutunjian and her(?) ilk in Vermont: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
“Look at the Zombies, who cut off their heads, they’re right beside you”
Why don’t we all just let those with mental disorders run the asylum? Isn’t that what’s happening here. Like the incoherent rantings of a person being treated for mental problems, people are so afraid of them they stay silent. It’s very obvious that this person will attack anyone who disagrees. This is the result of the liberal invasion of the public school system. Transgender teachings have overtaken the 3 Rs. Parents have to risk sending their children into these indoctrination centers teaming with groomers and school board members like this one and the same thing playing out in Randolph. This is an example of a small vocal mob that threatens everyone who does not comply. It should have been nipped in the bud buy now it’s war over the sanity and morals at the public paid for schools. Another great job done by the Vermont virtue signaling voters.
This should remove any doubt that school boards often attract activists, many of them emotionally unstable.
Not only that, existing board directors actively recruit extremist activists. Seen it first hand in my community. And you are right, many of these folks are very mentally unstable. Not surprising as 78 million Americans on on prescription psychedelic anti depressants and anti-anxiety meds.
As a conservative, I consider myself an activist. I think ‘moron’ is a better term in describing those who will do whatever they can to get their way; Saul Alinsky-style.
You’re wrong. Arrogance and spite aren’t synonymous with stupidity.
Bad idea to assume that opponents are stupid.
“Moron” doesn’t describe the perpetrators of the social upheaval, but instead what they refer to as “useful idiots”…the sheeple who vote to make it all possible.
The marxists are extremely clever in their social marketing, successfully portraying in most of the the public’s eye anyone who expresses even tepid support for Republicans as “white supremacists, fascists, extremists” etc.
They keep running for office until they slip in, Then they commence to destroy all that is right and NORMAL. Unfortunately, once in, they tend to stay in, running amuck, telling lies, and creating havoc where possible. Bernie, Leahy, Scott are just the tip of the destroy America movement.
Make bullying great again.
Why does this person use 2 names? Actually, this is a practice in violent Left communities.
I was called a “trumper” for objecting to transwomen in Women’s Sports.
The same “group think” that sat in the offices at Twitter and perpetrated information suppression and censorship. It is very clear to see (with receipts pouring into the public realm) they also sit on your school boards, class rooms, city/town halls, State House, State agencies, federal agencies, and White House. The only power they possess is granted to them by a bamboozled public, corrupted governments, and mega-corporations. Now that the Truth is coming out, they desperately cling to their lies – it is all they have or ever had all along. The narrative is no longer justified or relevant.
Definitely needs the very spiritual guidance she obviously mocks…anger is clouding her judgment and perspective…This is what we get when God is taken out of our schools and replaced by perverse Woke Whackos on school boards. Is that a Pentagram symbol on her facebook cover photo? That speaks volumes…
I agree with you. She seems to think she is a Wiccan but her ways are not the ways of a Wiccan. Wiccans are very spiritual, helpful, not insulting, and make good friends.
This reminds me of the remark the poet T S Eliot made when asked to participate in the founding of UNESCO, that ‘the first task of a cultural organization should be to consider how far ‘culture’ is susceptible to organization where the opportunities for getting lost in a verbal labyrinth without issue are unlimited’ . the only issue of the State, Dept of Education and Vt municipalities to enact a bureaucratic management of ‘culture’ on Vermonters is what you see in this article and there is hardly any different response by the kids than supposedly ‘grown-up’ adults. Meanwhile the old rock n roll song proves to be more accurate with respect to both teachers and students than ever: ‘don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology,don’t know about no science book. . .’
I hope she gets dismissed from her position on the school board. Her comments are unethical and not deserving of a person on a public board or committee.
Mr. Klar: please explain to me why you continue to ignore the prospect of School Choice as a cure to the dystopian educational dogma presented by folks like Shannon Morrill Tutunjian. Lobbying for School Choice governance is surely preferable, and a more efficient use of our time, than ranting about the dehumanizing societal split in sensibilities that is evident on most public-school boards. We get it.
So, rather than fan the flames, why not lobby our legislators to allow all Vermont parents to use tuition vouchers to send their kids to the educational programs they believe best meet their children’s need. Ninety Vermont school districts already provide tuition vouchers. There is ongoing court litigation against Vermont’s clearly unconstitutional limitation of allowing those tuition vouchers in other districts.
After all, in the recent settlement reached with the Agency of Education for not allowing tuition vouchers to be used in religious schools, the AOE set a serious precedent and agreed to pay the plaintiff’s court costs too. You’re an attorney. Rather than rant and rave, do something proactive – sue them.