This week I was afraid to speak, which is not something that usually happens to me. The school board was discussing a vaccine mandate for students 12 and up. I was sitting in my house, zooming in to the conversation, and I knew that the protestors who had disrupted our in-person meeting earlier that night were watching. I knew that people who were passionate and angry wanted to intimidate me. I had watched people rush the stage, gesturing wildly and calling us cowards, fascists, and things I won’t type on my church blog. It was clear they were threatening us with violence if we didn’t agree with them. Their tactics worked. Our normally loquacious school board responded with silence when the chair invited us to share our view points on the mandate, something we have been studying and thinking about for months.
I was working up the nerve to start when another board member began. And then another, and finally a third spoke. And I knew that I needed to be clear about what I thought on this matter and why. Partially so that people, like the dad I know from my daughter’s elementary school who has researched exhaustively through CDC data about what is right for his family, could continue to try to share their different view points with me. And partially for the kids who had walked out of school that morning, demanding we pass the mandate, that they might know they were being heard. And partially for my own integrity. I was afraid, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from speaking.
My friends are angry on my behalf. They saw me on Wednesday morning, still shellshocked from the stress and fear of the night before. They wonder why someone doesn’t do something. Maybe the governor or the feds or the health people. The doctors and health experts who have been advising the school district don’t want to tell us what to do, it’s not their role. A friend who is an icu physician told me that she believes everyone should get the vaccine, but wasn’t sure about a mandate because of all the politics around it.
It seems like everyone is waiting for someone else to do something. For someone to take responsibility. For people on their own to decide to get the vaccine. For a higher power to make the choices. For someone to stop the division and violence and hatred. We need someone to make things better. I believe that God calls us to be the someone in our small ways. To show up with love and with the God given talents we have to try to work together to make the world better.
And so I spoke. I can’t fix everything, well I can’t fix anything. But I can show up in my role as an elected school board member, who has listened and read and thought and yes, prayed about what to do in this moment. I truly believe the only way we get through this season of fear and division is to come together in the ways each of us can and try to do what is right with love and gentleness. Speak, even if your voice shakes, as the advocate Maggie Kuhn said.
And this is what I said (not an exact quote) in my shaky voice that night. I am a yes on the mandate. One of the health officials, when asked what she recommended on the mandate, said that we needed to be clear on our goal as a board and then ask ourselves if the vaccine mandate would be a good tool to help us achieve our goal. My goal, and the one that the district has also championed in this moment of the pandemic, is to have our students receive as much in-person instruction as is possible. Students who have been vaccinated have to quarantine for a shorter time period than unvaccinated students if there is an exposure. This is one way the mandate would reduce missed instruction. The mandate would also help to reduce spread, as it lowers the chance that someone would get infected in the first place and bring the virus to school.
We don’t vote until November 16th at the earliest as the board continues to listen to the community and the staff develop a process and some exemption ideas. I will continue to listen and learn. I will continue to speak even if I am afraid.
-Eilidh
Recent Comments