Dear District and High School Leaders,
In 2015, before our Homecoming football game, Megyn Kelly was bestowed the prestigious honor of being recognized in Bethlehem Central (BC) High School’s Alumni Hall of Fame. According to BC’s website, this award is given to a High School alum who embodies “the knowledge, character, and values of BC and attained distinguished achievements in their professional or personal lives.” Megyn Kelly has a history of racist remarks and “gaslights” her consumers. Unfortunately, a quick perusal of her Twitter account makes it clear, she does not embody the level of ‘knowledge, character and values’ that we, community members, expect from BC graduates that receive this honor.
On October 28, 2018, our Students for Peace and Survival at Bethlehem Central High School were so concerned about Megyn Kelly’s ‘blackface was OK when she grew up’ comment that they wrote a thoughtful open letter to Ms. Kelly’s employer, MSNBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/megyn-kelly-went-our-high-school-no-blackface-wasn-t-ncna925101.
Students and concerned community members also expressed concerns to the District administration and the Board of Education. The District responded with a November 5, 2018 statement found here: https://www.bethlehemschools.org/statement-requests-remove-megyn-kelly-bc-hall-fame/.
Which reads in part:
“The goal for the committee in the coming months is to create a uniform procedure under which a petition for review and/or removal of a Hall of Fame member, as well as a subsequent appeals process, could be applied in situations where a member’s actions are called into question.
Once such a plan is in place, the requests to remove Ms. Kelly will be reconsidered and another vote will be undertaken by the committee using a standard methodology that would be fair and equitable to any of our Alumni Hall of Fame members.”
In the two years that have passed since the release of this statement, has the District created a procedure to remove a Hall of Fame member and has the request to remove Ms. Kelly been reconsidered? If yes, please update me on the actions taken to date. If no, please explain why BC dropped this important issue and re-initiate the process.
When Ms. Kelly issued an apology for her racist comment about ‘blackface’ she promised to bring “more understanding, love, sensitivity and honor” into her commentary/journalism, something our Students for Peace and Survival honed in on in their letter. But she has done none of that; most recently in the context of Jacob Blake’s death – just spend a few minutes on Ms. Kelly’s Twitter page and you can see gaslighting and racism.
Ms. Kelly’s actions and words are divisive and racist. Her journalist credentials are questionable and her moral lapses are obvious. She is not someone our District should celebrate nor is she a person that our children should emulate. Please remove her from our Hall of Fame expeditiously.
There is an active petition for this cause: https://www.change.org/p/students-remove-megyn-kelly-from-bchs-hall-of-fame.
Respectfully submitted,
Judy Abbott