Parents, staff, students and community members filled all available three-minute-long public comment slots during the Brookline School Committee meeting on Thursday, Nov. 14 to discuss a student speaker at the upcoming Day of Racial Reform and Solidarity (DoRRS).

The student’s speech is expected to be played during the Telling Our Stories portion of DoRRS in January of 2025, a section allocated each year to listen to personal stories about race from students and staff members. All speeches during this portion of the event will be pre-recorded, reviewed by staff and shown by teachers only during a lesson. The student’s speech has not been recorded yet and will not be released outside of school.

Many parents and community members expressed anger and fear that the student’s speech will spread antisemitic messages and will not be vetted properly by staff. Multiple speakers mentioned concern about social media posts that feature the student participating in a pro-Palestinian protest, where he reportedly made anti-Israel statements.

Some speakers called for the elimination of DoRRS entirely and encouraged students to stage a walkout to protest the speaker, and others mentioned that they would keep their children home during the event.

The worries come after last year’s DoRRS featured a speaker whose speech, which alluded to the ongoing war in Gaza, elicited strong division and emotions among parents, students and staff members. After the speech, the Brookline Coalition Against Antisemitism responded in a Letter to the Editors of The Cypress, arguing that the speech was inaccurate and deeply harmful to Jewish students. DoRRS organizers this year are attempting to mitigate future division by adopting a pre-recorded, lesson-based format, aimed at facilitating educated discussion and reflection after each Telling Our Stories speech.

Spanish teacher Lindsay Davis, an organizer of this year’s Telling Our Stories portion of DoRRS, clarified multiple misconceptions during the public comment period. She said that all speeches needed to be personal narratives about race and vetted by at least three faculty members and the senior cabinet.

“I have read each of the speeches of the day. None of them are hateful,” Davis said. “Students are watching and listening to us tonight, and I would encourage us to lead with curiosity and welcome dialogue to support our collective learning moving forward.”

The student’s mother, who also spoke during the public comment period, raised concerns over her son’s safety.

“Hearing adults call my teenage son ‘barbaric’, ‘evil’, ‘antisemitic’ and ‘hateful’ on speech and action is disturbing and, at the very least, dangerous and honestly tantamount to child endangerment in the community where he lives and the school which he has to turn up every day to receive his education,” she said.

She said her son’s speech would be about “being silenced as a Palestinian student living in Brookline.”

In a letter sent to Head of School Anthony Meyer and Superintendent Dr. Linus Guillory on Sunday, Nov. 10, the organizers of the effort against the student’s speech requested for administrators to remove the speech from the event, provide “concrete, written guidance to all student speakers and faculty advisors in an effort to depoliticize speech” and secure an external, non-faculty source to review all Telling Our Stories speeches.

According to a staff member, Meyer has sent an email expressing his support of the student’s right to speak at the event.

The last speaker, Brookline parent Victor Zilbershot, along with other community members, voiced worries that DoRRS would not serve its intended purpose this year due to the student speaker.

“Don’t let [DoRRS] be taken over by voices with political agendas aimed at spreading hostility rather than unity,” Zilbershot said.

After finishing his speech, however, Zilbershot reflected on the previous speakers and said that despite the current division in Brookline, he remains hopeful that the community can find a way to bridge its differences.

“Sitting here, listening to everything was very depressing,” Zilbershot said. “I hope we will find the voice and courage to speak with one another and come to common ground, because we have an opportunity to do that.”

A correction was made on Thursday, Nov. 21. The protest did not take place on Oct. 6, 2024, even though the social media post’s caption includes that date.