Should Boise school board member Shiva Rajbhandari have apologized for vulgar tweet? | Opinion

Boise school board member Shiva Rajbhandari seems to have learned a valuable lesson after tweeting vulgarities at Gov. Brad Little for signing a bill into law criminalizing medical treatments for transgender youth.

“F--- you @GovernorLittle,” Rajbhandari tweeted. “I pray you live a long life so you can bear witness to the pain you’ve unleashed on Idaho’s children and families today. When you do die though, I’m pissing on your grave.”

Rajbhandari, 18, a senior at Boise High, wrote an apology after the Boise school board held an executive session to discuss the issue.

“To our patrons, I’m sorry,” Rajbhandari wrote. “I’m sorry that I communicated in a way that was crude and cruel and violated your trust in me.”

He also apologized to students for failing “to act as a role model for all of you and that I failed to represent the articulate, unrelenting and kind people that I know all of you to be.”

He also apologized to the school district staff and fellow board members.

We are disappointed that his apology did not include Gov. Little, but we are glad that he acknowledged how his tweet reflected poorly on his position as an elected official.

When this board endorsed Rajbhandari for school board, it was a difficult decision, and one of our misgivings was whether Rajbhandari could be mature enough to handle an elected position. Unfortunately, his tweet confirmed our misgiving, and it would be understandable for any one of the 11,000 people who voted for Rajbhandari to be disappointed.

Rajbhandari was the first student elected to the Boise school board, and unfortunately, his behavior likely will give pause to any voter in the future deciding on another student running for school board.

But let’s acknowledge a couple of key points.

The kids are getting sick of civility. They’ve seen what civility gets you.

Dozens of people testified with great civility during the hearings on the criminalization of medical care for transgender youth. Transgender teens and their families testified civilly. Doctors testified civilly. Transgender youth, their families, transgender adults and doctors wrote civil guest opinion pieces week after week urging, pleading, begging legislators and the governor to not pass this horrible law.

This editorial board, with an abundance of civility, endorsed Little for governor, with the hope (now unjustified) and civil admonition that he stand up to the extreme elements of his own party and veto any bad bills that are rooted in fascistic tendencies and trample the civil liberties of Idahoans.

Our civility purchased nothing.

And this is not a mere disagreement over mundane tax policy or transportation funding. This literally is a matter of life and death.

With Little’s signature, House Bill 71 likely will lead to the deaths of children with gender dysphoria who will no longer receive gender-affirming care.

The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.

Little signed a bill that allows the government to insert itself into a difficult medical decision among children, parents and their doctors and criminalizes doctors under threat of a felony and prison time.

House Bill 71 is a far worse and more serious mistake than any angry tweet.

In that context, Rajbhandari’s anger is understandable, even if his expression of it was not excusable.

Our coarsening political discourse is suffering from a lack of civility.

People from the far-right fringes show up at rallies with AR-15s, the Republican Party invites Kyle Rittenhouse to a shooting event fundraiser and practitioners of so-called confrontational politics challenge their enemies to boxing matches and repeat the childish taunt, “Cry harder.”

The greatest purveyor of incivility rose to the highest elected office in the land and his followers showed up at rallies with “F*** Joe Biden” flags and stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

But we caution against fighting fire with fire.

Just because one side engages in profanity-laced attacks, it should not be condoned from the other side.

Tweeting vulgarities might feel good in the moment, but it hurts your cause. Civility isn’t ultimately weakness; it’s the discipline required to make your cause more important than your feelings.

Expressing anger may be understandable, but losing one’s temper only serves to make you look unhinged and unreasonable, and it is not likely to win anyone over to your side.

We do not suggest that Rajbhandari lose any of that passion for what’s right and to rail against what’s wrong. We believe he could have conveyed that same level of passion and outrage with similar words.

Just without the profanity.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe and newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser.