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November 25, 2012

From the November 27, 1985 Archives - Speaker dispute before the board

Anonymous Princeton Times The Zope Gazette Sun Nov 25, 2012, 05:00 AM EST

PRINCETON — A meeting of the Board of Education focused on a recent event regarding a controversy surrounding the decision of George Keatley, Principal of Princeton Senior High School, and PSHS ROTC director Raymond McKinney's decision to cancel an assembly featuring South African Speaker Rev. Motalepula Chabaku.

The standing room only meeting was the first for Superintendent William Baker.

Baker listened to remarks from Doris Irwin, a representative of the Mercer County Citizens for Free Speech, who read a statement saying that Rev. Chabaku's freedom of speech was being denied; Franklin Long, Vice President of the State Chapter of the NAACP, who asked that a formal apology be extended to Chabaku and that the board pay her to return to the school to give her speech that would be attended on a volunteer basis; and Board member and local attorney William Akers who said, "We don't have to be in copetition iwth the rest of the world, but we can't be harmed by listening to others." and proposed a debate with her and the ROTC director.

On the Opinions page, it was believed that Principal Keatley was within his rights as the head of the school to deny a speaker whose, "one sided, emotional speech on a subject as highly controversial as Aparthied, by a person whose motives are questioned by many students as well as their parents;" and that, "If the school board has money lying around to pay for travel expenses of a speaker, they should apply it to the schools."

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From the November 27, 1985 Archives - Speaker dispute before the board

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