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Deborah Ramey had already written her column for the May edition of Hotline when she heard about the April 20 bloodbath at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. As she stared with morbid fascination at the horrific TV coverage, what was most striking to her were the misguided attempts by parents and pundits to assign blame for the shooting spree.
Brimming with righteous indignation, she scrapped her piece and penned a new one, a call for parents everywhere to instill “peace, love, and tolerance” in their children’s hearts. She also absolved the much-maligned rocker Marilyn Manson of any responsibility for the fifteen deaths (shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were fans), and exhorted readers to remove guns from their homes and fight the National Rifle Association.
The column never appeared in Hotline and never will. The monthly newsletter is published by the Parent Teacher Association of Devon Aire Elementary in Kendall. Until May 3 Ramey was the PTA president for that school, which her two children attend. But when newsletter editor Josie Bober refused to run Ramey’s “President’s Message,” and the PTA executive committee supported Bober’s decision, Ramey resigned in protest. According to the new acting president Lisa Vessels, Ramey “backed [the executive committee] into a corner” with her insistence on printing “items deemed to be inappropriate for publication in the PTA newsletter.”
Ramey says her opinions were classified as improper because, in speaking kindly of a shock-rocker and slamming the NRA, she was being too darn liberal for her cohorts’ taste. “So many people are acting as if Marilyn walked into that school and pulled the trigger,” she huffs. She points out that Manson canceled the last five dates of his tour in the wake of the Columbine shootings; the NRA went ahead and held a scaled-down version of its annual convention in Denver the following week. “[Manson] showed more respect for those kids than the NRA did,” Ramey charges.
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Realizing such opinions were potentially controversial, Ramey says she first showed the column to Devon Aire principal Aron Brumm. He told her that, as principal, he had no direct authority over the PTA newsletter unless it contained something injurious to the school.
Still, editor Bober balked. “She asked me if I knew we had a right to bear arms in this country,” Ramey recalls. Bober declined to comment for this story.
At this point Ramey placed a call to Marilyn (no relation) Spiegel, president of the Dade County Council PTA/PTSA. “I told [Ramey] that her newsletter editor should resign, but it didn’t go down that way,” Spiegel says. “I’m really sorry about [Ramey’s resignation]; I think that Deborah is pure of heart and, frankly, I understand where she was coming from.”
After a flurry of phone calls from flustered PTA officers, Ramey decided not to ask for Bober’s resignation. Instead she tweaked the text of her column and resubmitted it. Bober still didn’t want to publish the screed, so Ramey threatened to print and distribute the newsletter herself.
The seven-member executive committee, which included Bober and principal Brumm, called an emergency meeting on April 29 to decide the column’s fate. Ramey only attended the beginning and end of the meeting; her daughter was performing in the school’s spring concert.
While Ramey was away, the committee reviewed the rewritten column, which included the following paragraphs:
Children who are growing peace and love inside of them cannot be affected by Marilyn Manson or movie violence — those things only provide fuel for seeds of hate which are already planted. For people full of love and peace, Marilyn Manson is a provocative rocker, and movie violence a marvel of special effects. Only for those already planted with hatred can outside influences be a manifesto or plan for personal action.
We MUST remove guns from our homes and fight the NRA with full force. Did you know that if you have a gun in your home you are 43 times more likely to be the victim of gunfire? Mothers in this country played a significant part (through Mothers Against Drunk Driving) in changing the attitudes and numbers of deaths each year from drunk driving. Parents, I beg you all to remove the guns from your homes. Take them to a police station and turn them in. STOP this nonsense NOW! STOP it in whatever way you can. FIGHT the NRA with your vote. FIGHT them with your words. FIGHT them until gun violence is under control in this country.
In this draft Ramey included a disclaimer, stating that this column contained her own opinion and did not necessarily reflect the views of the Devon Aire PTA. “Whatever comes under my message is my message,” Ramey stresses. “I’d be willing to take the heat for my personal opinion.”
After some consideration the committee suggested editing the piece further. Ramey was shocked. “They all directed me to edit out all references to Marilyn Manson and the NRA,” Ramey says. Brumm recalls that several parents at the meeting had “very strenuous objections” to Marilyn Manson being mentioned in anything but an unfavorable light. A Dade County PTA representative, who attended the meeting at Ramey’s request, added that Ramey’s anti-NRA rhetoric went far beyond the PTA’s usual gun-control advocacy, Brumm notes.
Ramey responded by giving the board two pieces of paper: her column (unchanged), and a letter of resignation. “I told them they could either print the one or accept the other,” she says. The board refused to run her column, so on May 3, Ramey quit.
Devon Aire PTA’s acting president Vessels says she and the other executive committee members were less concerned about Ramey’s column than the way she “tried to shove it down our throats.” But Vessels maintains the committee did think the opinions were inappropriate, especially given that the newsletter is distributed to children. “These are kindergartners through fifth-graders, and [Ramey] was directing people to do things [like] take guns out of their house.
“We’d never had those kinds of personal opinions in there,” Vessels continues. “It’s a little newsletter about fundraisers and other things going on at the school. If we started to print those type of opinions, we’d be getting away from what the newsletter was supposed to be.”
But maybe that would be a good thing.
“[Ramey] may have written a little forcefully, but if she is taking a pro-gun-control position, she’s espousing the PTA’s position,” Marilyn Spiegel emphasizes. “We don’t go around attacking the NRA, but we do lobby for gun control on the state and national level. We want our people to be out there talking about issues. The PTA is not just about bake sales and choral recitals, it’s about being politically active for children.”
