Responding to Racist Accusations, Questioning the Colonials Retirement Process and Releasing the Records

A Citizen’s Rebuttal to Comments at Previous School Committee Meeting (12/2 and 12/16)

The following statement was submitted by the author who read this at the public meeting on 12/16.

By Christine Marlow

On Dec. 2nd – a few people spoke in favor of getting rid of the mascot.  During their statements, many of them called the Save the Colonial Mascot speakers “racists” and “white supremacists”. 

I shouldn’t have been surprised by these lies since a few months ago a Select Board member from Boxborough posted on Facebook that everyone who has a “Save Our Colonial” sign in their yard is a white supremacist.

And the students that wanted to save the Mascot were also accused of being racist and white supremacists.

The saddest part of all this is twofold.

First, the only reason for these serious accusations was because they disagreed with our stand. 

Second, by using these inflammatory words every time they disagree with a group, they are diluting the seriousness of the actual hate crimes.

For the record, the Save Our Colonial Group was stating that the Administration & school committee were not being truthful with the community.  In the summer of 2020, they made the decision, per the documents received in the records requests, to retire this mascot without community input.  They did announce they would give the school 3 weeks to understand what the school community wanted.  But there was never any quantitative way to determine the results.  In fact, all of the petitions favored keeping the mascot.  Even without the greater community being aware of this debate.

Of course the school committee unanimously agreed to retiring the Mascot, this was their plan from the beginning in the summer of 2020.

Adam, I suggest you write a new response to the statements that are made about the mascot.  Because the statement that you are reading is not true.

And hand over the rest of the records request. These have been deemed, by the Massachusetts Secretary of State, as something this community should have access to.  If you have nothing to hide, as you claim, then why are you using lawyers to keep these records from us and wasting the communities tax dollars in the process.

Thank you for your time.

December 2, 2021