Principal suppresses student election results for being too white

After a middle-school student election earlier this month in San Francisco, Principal Lena Van Haren would not report the results because the ethnic breakdown of the winners did not match the school’s demographic ratio. “It’s not OK for a school that is really, really diverse to have the student representatives majority white,” Van Haren said.

When I called the school to ask for some clarification, a “communications” person referred me to “the legal department,” which wouldn’t answer my questions and referred me back to “communications,” which still isn’t communicating. But students are: San Francisco seventh-grader Sebastian Kaplan told KRON-TV that the vote was fair, “so it is not like people rigged the game, but in a way, now it is kinda being rigged.”

It took 10 days of increasing complaints from parents and students for Van Haren to release the names of the winners. She finally did so on Oct. 19, insisting she never intended to nullify the election, but only to take a “pause” so she could have “a teachable moment” about the importance of diversity. Instead, it became a teachable moment about pressures to alter the outcome of an election after the votes are cast.

UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh pointed out that Van Haren’s actions likely ran afoul of the California constitution, which does not allow education officials to discriminate or give preferential treatment on the basis of race. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders argued that Van Haren had telegraphed that “black kids are supposed to vote for black kids. Likewise Latinos.”

Saunders nailed the biggest problem: To appoint Latino and African-American students to the council beyond the students who were elected, as the principal has suggested she wants to do, would send the demeaning message that “minority students cannot succeed without special breaks.”