Georgia GOP talks about not silencing different views yet they barred students from speaking

Zachariah Chou serves as an opinion coordinator for the USA Today Georgia network.

The GOP loves to talk about how its members are silenced for having differing views. One wrong opinion will have you censored and cast out of society for life: canceled and ostracized.

So when a group of students affiliated with education and public policy advocacy non-profit Deep Center traveled to Atlanta earlier this week to offer public comment on a bill relating to the teaching of "divisive concepts" in schools, you might expect the students to at least be given the opportunity to speak about their opposing views. They are the ones affected by the bill, after all.

But then you'd be wrong.

In a video clip of the committee meeting posted to Twitter, one can watch (in dismay) the proceedings of the State Senate's Education and Youth Committee meeting.

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In it, you can see Sen. Lester Jackson (D-Savannah) asking the committee chair Sen. Chuck Payne (R-Dalton) if the students in attendance, who had driven four hours from Savannah, could speak on the bill. Payne stammers and says there's no time and that they have to move on, depriving the students of their public comment. There is some heated back-and-forth between Payne and the audience members. One student yells, "This is the second time you've done this to me."

"To have us silenced, to our face like that, it was really maddening. I started tearing up; it was the only way to release the anger," another student said after the incident.

If students can't speak in the committee tasked with overseeing K-12 education, who can?

Setting examples for the next generation of policy makers

I worked for several years at my university's public service center, where our mission was to get young people civically engaged in meaningful ways.

Young people are in a unique position, as they are affected by legislation while paying taxes and not yet having the right to vote.

To exercise one of their few remaining options of civic participation is an especially meaningful and significant act by a young person, but that is what makes the video so much harder to watch.

If the students came to support the bill, would they have been allowed to speak?

While the exact details of why the students were cut off have yet to be extricated, the students get the benefit of the doubt in my eyes. They drove for hours to show up in person at the meeting. As indicated by one of the speakers in the video, this isn't even the first time they've tried to speak and have been cut off, so my guess is that they knew and followed the procedure that should have given them the right to present a public comment.

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If the students did everything correctly, what business does the party of law and order have depriving citizens of the right to public comment?

And even if they did forget to sign up somewhere, they are still students. Parliamentary procedure is meant to foster debate and discussion, not function as an excuse to cut it off. In an alternate world where professional courtesy and respect for citizens actually exist, it is not beyond my imagination to envision everyone on the committee giving unanimous consent so the students could speak.

Shutdown of public discourse?

Will the coverup be worse than the crime? It's hard to say so early on. Had Sen. Payne allowed the students to speak, perhaps this would have all gone under the radar.

But instead, Sen. Payne opted to give these kids a special taste of the nastiness of politics. One can hope that some of these students grow up to become senators themselves and that as committee chairs they'd allow anyone attending the right to speak, regardless of political opinion.

After the meeting, several students recorded their testimonies against the bill, which were posted online. In one, a student states, "If history has taught us anything, it's that when you restrict and suppress the youth, it never ends well for the oppressor."

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Georgia senator bars students from speaking out about education bill