Midnight Raid

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive. Posted May 12, 2003.

Tom Treece gives a course called "Public Issues" at Spaulding High School in Barre, Vermont. Right now, he's embroiled in a public issue himself, after a local police officer entered his classroom under peculiar circumstances on April 9 to take photographs of student artwork.

The uniformed police officer, John Mott, went into the class at 1:30 in the morning. He told the Times Argus, which broke the story on May 5, that "he entered the school through an unlocked maintenance door." The school superintendent, Dorothy Anderson, says he banged on the front door of the school and got the custodian to let him in.

In any event, he convinced the custodian to unlock the door to Treece's classroom, and he took a picture of a student project that showed President Bush with duct tape over his mouth, and the words: "Put your duct tape to good use. Shut your mouth."

Treece told me this project was part of an assignment for a unit he was teaching on Iraq. It had three parts. The first part was to participate in a debate on whether to invade Iraq. The second was to write a paper defending your perspective on the issue. And the third was to make a poster illustrating your point of view. Six of his students put together the offending poster.

Mott, who did not return several calls from me, told the Times Argus, "I wanted everybody else to see what was in that room." The paper said the students' project "offended him as an American and a retired military man." He told the paper, "Having spent 30 years in uniform, I was insulted. I'm just taking a stand on what happens in that classroom as a resident and a voter and a taxpayer in the community."

Mott, incidentally, used to work at Spaulding High as the JROTC officer.

Superintendent Anderson was not happy that Mott entered the school during off-hours to further his own political agenda.

"I find this behavior, at the very least, in violation of our policy for visitors at the school," she wrote Police Chief Michael Stevens on April 16. "I also find it disturbing that a police officer would wear his uniform under such circumstances, thereby intimidating our employee into letting him in the building at a very unusual hour. I question the intent of his visit. Why could he not have come during regular school hours? Please look into this matter and determine if any ethical or legal guidelines were breached."

According to Anderson, the police chief told her "he was going to handle it administratively." Chief Stevens did not return several phone calls from The Progressive.

On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh called Mott a hero and posted the students' artwork on the Limbaugh web page.

Anderson is not happy about that. "These kids didn't turn these projects in with any understanding that they would end up on Rush Limbaugh," she said. "Their parents feel very violated and angry."

According to the Times Argus, Mott at least initially "refused orders from Barre Town Police Chief Michael Stevens and Town Manager Carl Rogers to supply school officials with copies of the photographs."

Anderson says she does not want the police department to pursue charges against Mott.

"There's a huge bonfire here already burning," she says. "I don't want to throw gasoline on it."

The student artwork is just part of the bonfire.

Treece got heat for something he himself posted about the Iraq War, and both controversies have become embroiled in the local school budget that is up for a vote.

"After 9/11 we put up this dialogue board, where teachers and students are allowed to put up their written opinions on various issues," explains Anderson.

The postings had to be signed and dated, and could not be vulgar, Anderson says.

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