School Leaders Lie to Silence Gay Teen, Face No Accountability

Tyler Johnson in Tully, NY won’t take silence as an answer

As a student here, someone very directly impacted by your actions, I can attest to the fact that not a single thing has changed… so many of us still feel beyond uncomfortable. — Tyler Johnson in a speech to the Tully Board of Education, February 15, 2022

When Tyler spoke those words, pushing for positive change in the high school that discriminated against him because he’s gay, he had no idea he was about to feel far more uncomfortable, that Board of Education President Denise Cardamone would end the meeting shouting at him and his supporters, berating them for testifying about Superintendent Robert Hughes’ long track record of discriminating against minorities and bullying staff and students. This story starts with an attempt to silence Tyler, and those attempts continue today.

On January 6, after 17-year old Tyler Johnson was selected to be honored as a role model in a publication run by the staff of Tully High School in upstate New York, his principal shocked him by telling him a district policy barred publication of anything touching on “sexuality, orientation, religion, or illegal drugs.” He told Tyler he would have to leave out paragraphs he wrote about being gay and overcoming bullying because he’s gay.

Tyler’s mother Pamela Custer was also shocked, so she phoned Principal Mike O’Brien, who repeated that his hands were tied, that a district policy prevented publication. There was nothing he could do.

Tyler went viral on TikTok seeking justice, and then national and local press picked up the story. Tyler soon learned no district policy existed. O’Brien had called his boss, District Superintendent Robert Hughes, who told him to censor Tyler. What Hughes said exactly is murky. He won’t give details, and neither will O’Brien. More on that in a minute, because the missing details may be the most important part of this story.

Tyler Johnson quickly stepped into a community leadership role

I interviewed Tyler before his story hit the news, and I’ve stayed in touch. He has displayed remarkable maturity for a teenager, leading a local movement in Tully to push for positive change in the school system. Along with adult community leaders like Elizabeth Ferguson, Tyler has rallied Tully residents, documented dozens of accounts of anti-LGBTQ bullying by teachers and staff, and organized protests and participation at Board of Education meetings.

| They’re demanding that Hughes and O’Brien, for starters, resign or be fired. |

After news media picked up the story, Hughes reversed his censorship decision and said it had been his alone. He acknowledged he’d been wrong, but claimed he had merely been trying to derail additional controversy about district diversity programs. Tyler’s supporters want to know what controversy Hughes meant, saying they aren’t aware any existed. Hughes has not answered them, nor have any members of the Tully Board of Education.

In a meeting on January 24, attended by about 70 of Tyler’s supporters, the board listened to a litany of complaints about both O’Brien and Hughes. Speaker after speaker spoke about both men discriminating against LGBTQ students, Black students, and other people of color in the Tully system and at other schools at different points in their careers. Ferguson, who helped collect accounts of discrimination, made sure board members had access to accounts collected on line.

The board voted to hire a lawyer to investigate the matter, to pay a faculty advisor to head up a the school’s existing Gender and Sexual Alliance (GSA) club, to consider implementing formal diversity policy, and to provide diversity training for teachers and staff.

Trust begins with transparency

Tyler, Ferguson, and other supporters call themselves Time For Change, Tully. They’re calling for accountability and transparency from the board level on down. They don’t accept that change can be led from above by people with long track records of bullying members of minorities.

They’re demanding that Hughes and O’Brien, for starters, resign or be fired.

As Tyler put it Tuesday night at the board meeting, “Your lack of regard for student safety, mental health and well being, and feeling welcome and included has shown truly where your priorities lie.”

Tyler says he’s intensely uncomfortable going to a school run by O’Brien in a district led by Hughes, and I don’t blame him. He’s calling for transparency and an end to official lies.

Tully administrators lied to Tyler, and nobody will take responsibility

Principal O’Brien claimed to Tyler and his mother, separately and more than once, that district policy mandated censoring Tyler. That claim, each time he made it, was false.

Was it a knowing lie?

Only O’Brien and Hughes know for sure, but simple logic dictates that either Hughes or O’Brien, or both of them together, knowingly lied. No other reasonable explanation fits the facts.

• If Hughes told O’Brien to censor Tyler because of a district policy, then Hughes knowingly lied to O’Brien.
• If O’Brien made up the policy story after Hughes told him to censor Tyler, then O’Brien knowingly lied.
• If both administrators knew the policy didn’t exist, then they both lied and colluded in the lie.

The only other explanation would be that Tyler and his mother are lying. I interviewed each of them by phone, separately and more than once, before this story blew up and before O’Brien’s claims about a district policy were exposed as false. They independently volunteered to me that O’Brien told them about that policy. Neither had reason to be untruthful, because they assumed the policy was real. When they learned it wasn’t, they realized they’d been lied to.

On Wednesday, I left detailed messages with O’Brien, Hughes, and Cardamone asking them to help me understand their perspective or to explain how O’Brien and/or Hughes did not lie. None of them returned my calls.

Tully students and parents say the time for transparency and professionalism is now

Time For Change, Tully members say they don’t understand how the Board of Education can tolerate knowing lies from professional administrators. How can they allow schools to be run by people who lack ordinary ethics? How can they be content to allow educators to model unethical behavior to children?

Tyler wonders how he’s supposed to thrive in a school run by people who will lie to him if they find it in their best interest. Speaking of lies, Tyler says Hughes’ are continuing. Hughes claims he personally and humbly apologized to Tyler. Tyler says that did not happen. He says an apology has to start with transparency and honesty, which Hughes has ducked.

The Board doesn’t want to hear it

About 25 Time for Change, Tully members turned out for Tuesday’s board meeting feeling hopeful and confident. That changed fast. They say the board intentionally prolonged other business to run the clock down, interrupted them constantly when their time to speak finally came, and tried to shut them down by imposing time limits.

Then Board President Cardamone began to shout, ending the meeting while angrily rejecting criticism of Superintendent Hughes’ character and professional ethics.

Time For Change, Tully members tell me they have lost confidence in the board and do not believe board members are able or willing to make Tully schools truly welcoming and safe for LGBTQ students and members of other minorities.

Tyler has lost confidence.

Every day, he walks into a school run by a man with a long track record of discrimination and bullying, in a district run by a man with the same track record, knowing one or both of those men knowingly lied to him.

Tyler and Tully are asking for simple honesty and professionalism. Is that too much to ask when LGBTQ people are involved?

James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].

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