Last year, Hamilton High School magnet teacher Alan Kaplan was called a racist over a gospel choir debate in his classroom - despite multiracial support for his real-world teaching style. This week, he's the topic of debate himself, again, for showing a student-made video of a particularly raunchy campus dance in a bid to stimulate a First Amendment discussion over pornography.
"As well as comments and mugging for the camera, it includes a few minutes of dance moves you wouldn't show your mother or minister," says L.A. Weekly columnist John Seeley of the video, adding the school principal and other staff on duty at the dance "say they repeatedly broke up clusters of students whose conduct was 'inappropriate'."
The paper says just how inappropriate depends on whom you ask - the student council vice president told the paper some of the dance routines were "simulated sex" and "obscene", while other students reportedly described them as "out of hand".
Kaplan's discussion was both vivid and more abstract, John Seeley says. "(He) turned student attention to the question of the limits of 'artistic' expression under the law, examining both the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and the restrictions implied by the state's education code, which bans obscenity." Seeley says the student consensus was that the dancing went "beyond the pale" and should have been stopped.
But some of Kaplan's students subsequently faced administrative questions about the debate and video, Seeley continues. "(I)t seems clear," he writes, "that an issue of 'inappropriate' subject matter underlies the interrogations. Kaplan was not advised by Hamilton administrators of any specific charges, learning of the inquiry only when students who were pulled out of classes reported back to him."
Seeley suggests other Hamilton teachers see the flap as part of a harassment campaign. He also cites a student who thinks it's tied to last year's flap and by the same coalition leader who accused Kaplan of racism.
That flap involved Kaplan's bringing a debate over school funding of a gospel choir into class as part of a discussion about political interest groups. The coalition leader, Wil Wade, is demanding Hamilton principal Donald Winter probe whether showing the dance video invaded student privacy rights, Seeley says.
