Warning: This story contains discussion of suicide and mental illness. If you are experiencing thoughts of self-harm or suicidal ideation, contact the mental health and suicide hotline at 988.
During the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education meeting on February 26, members of the school district community expressed their frustration with a directive to stop teaching The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in AP Lit, and how it has been handled by district administration.
The conversation at the Board Meeting had been building for weeks. In early February, district administration issued the directive to teacher Lori Martling, pulling Oscar Wao from AP Lit immediately following the book’s distribution to students.
District officials said it was in response to an emerging mental health crisis in the district, citing an obligation to protect the health of students. After outcry from AP Lit classes and the community at large, the district relented and held virtual meetings with AP Lit parents, offering an opt-in model but not rescinding the directive.
During public comments, AP Lit student Alice Vitale told the Board of Education, “As a student and passionate reader, I’m hoping to talk about what went wrong, what has not yet been corrected, and how we can move forward to address these issues, because I’m sure we’d all like to get SOMSD back on track.”
Vitale also voiced concerns about timing following Superintendent of Schools Jason Bing’s meetings with AP Lit parents. “Due to the format of our curriculum and the early May AP exam date, if we do not start reading this book around March 16, we will not be able to fit it into our curriculum,” she said.
AP Lit students Ellie Tamir-Hoehn, Izzy Sandoval, and Olive Witte also spoke against the district’s handling of the book and the mental health crisis.
“While we are under the guise of reinstatement, English Supervisor Suzanne Ackley has consistently refused to rescind the directive,” Tamir-Hoehn told the BOE. “Moreover, I plead with you to stop asserting this ban is to protect us or for mental health. You failed to remove Hamlet … you failed to remove Romeo and Juliet. … To say you care about mental health only when it supports you is a disgrace of an excuse to myself and my peers who have struggled from such. Attempting to remove the book does not eliminate those experiences or lessen its emotions but rather allows them to augment and expresses rhetoric that the stories addressing mental health and the voices of our peers are unworthy of being heard.”
Ellie Tamir-Hoehn
BOE Student Representative Scarlet Strogov weighed in as well. “I think that if we’re a school district that prides ourselves on learning diverse, difficult topics instead of straying away from them out of fear, I think that discussing and reading difficult topics is an essential part of fulfilling that wish. And I think that the most effective way to address mental health struggles is not to silence them, but to bring those perspectives to light and show students who may be struggling that they’re not alone,” she said.
Superintendent of Schools Jason Bing strongly reiterated the district’s priorities and reasoning throughout the meeting. “This is a mental health issue. It’s not a curriculum issue. It’s not an instruction issue,” he said.
Bing also talked about a widespread desire expressed by educators for more training on how to address mental health in the classroom, and his worries about teachers often being “mental health first-responders,” when that is not their job.
“It’s the right novel,” Bing said, “It’s just the wrong time.”
BOE President Will Meyer said that the Board had not taken a position on the issue, adding, “The Superintendent has made the determination at this point that the students are able to read the text with parent permission, and the Board has not at this time seen the need to take formal action.” He reiterated the board’s commitment to “intellectual freedom and the freedom to read, as well as our obligation to the wellbeing of the children entrusted to the district’s care.”
Meanwhile, AP Lit teacher Lori Martling said she “could not be any prouder” of her students. “I mean, what a glorious problem I present to you tonight. I have somehow managed to have teenagers want to read a novel so desperately, and yet you seek to oppose me.”
AP Lit Teacher Lori Martling
“The novel will be taught next year. Again, students were able to opt in this year. It was not pulled out of the curriculum,” Bing maintained.
Martling said, “I don’t understand why there is such objection…. I treat [Oscar Wao] with sensitivity. I give trigger warnings. I give alternate book options. Opting out was always an option. I didn’t need the administration to tell me that. I’ve been doing that for over a decade. It’s a best practice.”
“I am begging you to please remove the directive that still remains intact,” Martling said. “I am begging you to bring me into the conversation because I have been left out of it entirely.”
Ella Levy is a 12th grade student at Columbia High School and is working as a paid freelancer with Village Green as part of a grant from the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.
