☆ Local school board member on controversial censureship: All about “silencing the minority voice”
Chabot-Las Positas Community College board member Dr. Luis Reynoso recently came under fire for reposting an allegedly offensive meme on LinkedIn. After being investigated and censured in what he calls an unprofessional “witch hunt,” Reynoso speaks exclusively with Opp Now about the precarious state of protected free speech—and his vision for reforming college education.
Opportunity Now: The CLPCC district formed a committee earlier this year that decided your recent LinkedIn post made some people feel disrespected or excluded. However, you maintain this is an issue of upholding free speech versus silencing unpopular opinions. What exactly happened?
Luis Reynoso: In October, I posted this meme on LinkedIn, and a student named Kyle Johnson commented a month later that he found it offensive. From there, things snowballed: The chancellor was called, the instructors' senate had a meeting, and they took a vote of no confidence. Then, the CLPCC school board classified it as complete.
Throughout this process, I could never face my accusers. The actual charges were never identified. It turned into a witch trial overnight.
ON: Why is being censured by the college district such a big deal? What are the consequences of overly gung-ho, or plain mistaken, censureship?
LR: I hear that idea often, that it's “just a censure,” but these things can destroy your professional life. It's a common practice for Human Resources departments to Google job applicants, so they can check what the community thinks about them. It can have a lot of bearing on hiring decisions. In the future, if HR or staff conduct background research on me, they'll discover I've been formally censured.
ON: What does this situation say about local school boards’ priorities, and how we view free speech and differences of opinion in the Bay Area?
LR: This is all about a lack of protected free speech, about silencing the minority voice that contradicts the majority. This is about an abuse of power.
Right now, the majority is being controlled by advocates who “cancel” truths they don't like or disagree with. And they find offense where it wasn't intended, such as in the meme I posted. I wanted to make a simple statement that we're being told that what we see isn't real. We're being told to deny the realities directly in front of us. For instance, we hear news reporters discuss “peaceful protests,” and you see chaos and things burning in the background. But there was nothing in my post about hating or trying to defame a community such as the LGBTQ community.
Until this incident, I wasn't aware how powerful cancel culture had gotten. The reactions to my meme caught me off guard.
Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity