Accountability is required, not an apology! As an alum parent of a Distinguished DON, apologies are meaningless. Answers are needed; an assembly plus published written responses. Tell us all WHY, the logic behind these decisions. What has also worked in the past is a visible public flagpole action: a hundred plus people at the flagpole calling out administrators. When the ASB Advisor told my student after elections he had to attend a full week of Just Communities to be eligible to serve on Student Council, students of Mexican ancestry from Eastside Boys Club, Girls Inc and band visibly rose up to demand a response from shamed administration. On a different topic, when I was separately accused parents and students met at the flagpole to hold administrators accountable. Public schools require public participation and intervention. Otherwise, sit back, complain, continue to pay thousands of hard earned dollars as our needed public schools collapse.
Proud father of a YAF kid here. We just visited the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi yesterday there was an exhibit there documenting the historical fact that Iran released all its American hostages within hours of Reagan’s inauguration and him taking the oath of office.
Does anyone wonder why that was? I don’t because I was there. We had just elected a president who said what he meant and meant what he said.
Fantastic article! Your strength and perseverance give me hope for your generation.
In a few days, the 200th day of captive terror for the hostages will come and go. Over 1,000 Isrealis were murdered by Hamas on Oct 7th. Over 200 men, women, and children, including infants were taken by Hamas that day. Hamas has never allowed the Red Cross or other humanitarian agencies in to assess the health of the hostages. Some of the hostages are feared to have died in captivity.
I pray God grant the hostages strength to get through these horrific times.
How many political prisoners aka hostages, including children and victims of torture, continue to languish in Israeli prisons? What are their names? How many Americans have been killed by Israeli military forces with no accountability whatsoever? Rachel Corrie. The servicemen on the USS Liberty. Shireen Abu Akleh. 78 year old Omar Asad. And many many more. If they happen to be Christian or Muslim instead of Jewish, does God love them less? In Catholicism, the answer is a clear and resounding "no." If a Christian says they do matter less, have they been a victim of the Scofield Reference Bible Psyop, the Satanic Heresy that goes by the oxymoronic name "Christian Zionism"? Would love to find the actual Christian Patriots in this town rather than those who fall on their knees in service to 70+ year ongoing war crime called "Israel." Even the name "Israel" is a deception. Christ said we who follow Him are the New Israel, not some atheist anti-Christian mendacious maniacs orchestrating a genocidal land grab in the Holy Land. I pray the scales may fall from the eyes of all of the deluded Americans who claim to be Christian but fail to follow Christ's most basic teachings. You shall not kill. You shall not steal. The Zionists did not follow these commandments as you can easily see in the rather honest essay by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in his famous essay called "The Iron Wall." May God forgive us for what we have allowed our country to be used for in The Holy Land, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, and Yemen at the behest of the Israel First crowd. May God give us the courage to tell the truth so that we can at least try to avert WW3 before it is too late.
Wow how proud your parents must be! You are courageous and should be held as an example of what free speech should be! Ashamed everyday of most liberals in Santa Barbara!
Shall we share this situation with local publications: the Independent, Montecito Journal, etc? Will they print it? Likely no, but we should see. Both are biased uni-party views. The censorship of conservative speech on campuses across the nation has reached fever pitch. WHY are these views censored and WHO is driving it? WHAT is their end game? As the public watches a former POTUS and current Presidential candidate taken OFF the campaign trail by a preposterous and petty court case, his opponent (the current POTUS) hits the trail, adopting the campaign platform of the former POTUS … presenting it as his own. The public sleeps, the media implies ‘nothing to see here’ by saying nothing. Benjamin Franklin said it all, didn’t he? “A Republic … if you can keep it .”
Thank you for bringing to light the oppression of free speech at our public schools.
It’s something I know I have spoken to school editors and Principals which is basically talking to a wall of denial.
The Demicrats are indoctrinating children, forcing them to listen to one opinion and refusing to allow students to express their free speech if it goes against the indoctrination narrative.
Wake up parents. You need to be on top of your kids. Schools are like drug dealers operating in plain sight in street corners corrupting your children.
Saddened to say , welcome to the real world Milan . Schools have been a place where they have been indoctrinated the minds of children for many decades starting in college and then going to high schools and now elementary. But more people and parents are waking up to these tactics that have brainwashed most . If you know what you want to do in life , forget going to college save your parents money and pick a vocational school or do a apprenticeship in your area of interest. You will learn a whole heck of a lot more and keep your sanity ,in this crazy mixed up world.
You are off to a better start then most at your age , because your mind is still yours .
Great article. Living (surviving) in Santa Barbara (south county) is a challenge to say the least. It is the most closed minded, abusive, abyss place to live. They say they are inclusive, but only to their like thinking clones. Put on your armor when you go, out for you will need it.
Well, we don't have the original article to see if the "truth" was told about Hamas, and Milan should have the right to have his views printed, even if they are Islamophobic or incorrect. But to give you one way of how parroting right wing news talking points about Hamas, even factually correct ones, can give the appearance of being "Islamophobic" is to imply that the conflict started on Oct 7, 2024 when Gazans have been living under siege and closure conditions since 2006, a period that has also included several "operations" with powerful murderous aerial bombardments. This is further leaving to the side that many Gazans are refugees expelled from Israel in 1948 and barred from returning due to not being Jewish. To put up a display to only mark the taking of Israeli hostages implies a lack of concern for the thousands of Palestinians, most of whom are Muslim, kept in detention without trial or conviction in Israeli prisons. If you see Palestinians as animals living in garbage as people like Ben Shapiro say or as "Amalek" as several Israeli officials including PM Netanyahu have said, then you are displaying a troubling level of dehumanization and bigotry against the Palestinian people. I believe it is better to allow people like Ben Shapiro and Netanyahu to expose their genocidal beliefs so that we can know how demonic and dangerous they are. I think the editors at The Forge are making a mistake. And it is also true that labeling opinions or a biased framing of events as "Islamophobic" or "anti-Semitic" is making a claim about the motives of the writer and always an ad hominem logical fallacy that should be never used to censor or cancel anyone. But if you want to try and understand *why* people feel that it is Islamophobic, I can help you understand that. While those who have embibed the DEI brainwashing are more honest about the roots and nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict than those who claim to be American Patriots yet ignorantly put Israel's interests first, both are dangerously anti-American in their willingness to go to censorship rather than debate as a way of shaping the discourse. We who care about freedom must be vigilant against this dangerous trend, even when it is being done by members of our own political camp. I hope you will join me in standing against our US state and federal governments using emotion to justify eroding our first amendment rights on college campuses as they silence students and professors deemed pro-Palestine or "pro-Hamas" and invoke the fallacious state department adopted definition of anti-Semitism that claims it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel.
I am sorry, but not surprised to read your thoughtful accounting of the one-sided liberties that you are experiencing and currently surrounds all of us. When Donald Trump told us that the media was the number one enemy of the people, he wasn’t wrong. This dangerous turn of the media towards propaganda will bring this great nation down if allowed to continue. American citizens need to wake up to the fact (and they seem to be, slowly but surely) that our taxpayer dollars are being used to create generations of Communists/Marxists that despise all that America stands for. Sadly those brainwashed in this process have no idea that they are being used as a tool by an insatiable, power hungry government that will eat their own once they have served their singular purpose.
Keep pressing forward with your wonderful writing, our true democracy depends upon it.
The most important speech to be protected by the first amendment is speech that might make some feel uncomfortable, that might challenge their beliefs. It seems that the school paper does support democracy and consequently it's policies support the majority opinion. When the left says they support democracy what they mean is that they support their opinions to the exclusion of all others. Your piece is well written and should be published. Milan, I can tell you that this is a small bump in a road which will lead to great things for you. As the geat Donald Trump said the best revenge is success. I would not be surprised if you receive a job offer from someone who reads your writing. If you want to make some money you can help me work on my 1966 mustang. I can teach you how to rebuild an engine.
Milan, Disappointing and sad to read your piece but, unfortunately, not surprising. What I find gross about the pro-Hamas fervor is the lack of historical understanding re: a "Palisteninan" state and radical Islam. Has no one heard of the Peel Commission, the 1948 UN resolution or later efforts all that offered a separate state that were summarily rejected. Has no one read Oriana Fallaci about radical Islam's desire to eradicate infidels (not to also mention the LGBTQ community, women's rights and modern society)? Your school administrators are cowards but, thankfully, you're not! Speak truth and history will reward you--thank you for speaking-up, i wish more younger folks did.
Why should they Palestinians have a separate state? They lived in the land for centuries but they should just accept Israel invading and displacing them? The Israelis aren't that unlike the immigrants entering America.
Many who lived in this area prior to the creation of the state of Israel, very willingly sold their land, which they viewed as arid and worthless, to Jewish buyers seeking legal residence in their former homeland.
What future grief we could have avoided had those normal land transactions continued to a critical mass. But the urgency caused by the post-Holcaust horrors did speed up the international Jewish homeland process. However, there does need to be recognition that a good deal of area now located within the borders of Israel was previously transferred legally, and not by force, international edict, squatting and/or occupation.
"The military occupation of Arab-owned lands started in the first few months of 1948 and was stepped up in April of that year, when whole towns like Beisan, Jaffa, Acre, Lydda and Ramleh and the Arab sections of the towns of Haifa, Safad and Jerusalem were taken over by the Haganah forces.8/ In May of the same year – 1948 – in view of the enormous number of Palestinians that had been driven from their land and property by the military operations, the United Nations appointed a Mediator, one of whose main tasks was to promote the well-being of the inhabitants of Palestine with the aid of the United Nations specialized agencies. In December of the same year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 194 (III), the operative part of which called upon the Provisional Government of Israel to permit and facilitate the return of the Palestinians to their homes, their land and their property."
Acquisition of Land in Palestine via the UN's website.
Just learned about it now, it's pretty saddening. 12 of 15 member nations supported the resolution and yet the United States caves into to Israel's wants as usual.
And the "United States" was taking direction from exactly who in the Biden administration to cast this vote?
Perhaps we need a moratorium on anyone making government decisions in our names during the last six months leading up to the next election.Fraught with too much conflicts of interests.
BTW: I support the US decision but they were certainly not doing this to get my vote. Nor even do the right thing. One suspects raw election year politics was behind this Biden UN vote.
Very well stated Milan...sadly the left has done a thorough job of canceling forums to express one's opinions. What your Principal Mr. Razo and others forget, they work for us. Their paychecks come from hard working Americans and their opinions DO NOT MATTER while at work. They can express their liberal views all they wish when they leave the campus. Of course, that's not the case in many schools and certainly not at SBHS. Mr. Razo etal. should get a letter from... a division of the ACLJ (there is one in Santa Barbara I believe). "Jay Sekulow is widely regarded as one of the foremost free speech and religious liberties litigators in the United States" Just saying...Blessings
Courageous efforts Milan. Sorry to hear a label like Islamophobic hurled at you. Unthoughtful idealogues will dismiss you because of it, but that is a demographic we hardly expected to reach anyhow. It is unfortunate that one party has to be the champion of free speech, what should be a universal value.
Beautifully written and well-stated. SBHS and The Forge should be embarrassed, should apologise to you, and definitely should run your op-ed.
Accountability is required, not an apology! As an alum parent of a Distinguished DON, apologies are meaningless. Answers are needed; an assembly plus published written responses. Tell us all WHY, the logic behind these decisions. What has also worked in the past is a visible public flagpole action: a hundred plus people at the flagpole calling out administrators. When the ASB Advisor told my student after elections he had to attend a full week of Just Communities to be eligible to serve on Student Council, students of Mexican ancestry from Eastside Boys Club, Girls Inc and band visibly rose up to demand a response from shamed administration. On a different topic, when I was separately accused parents and students met at the flagpole to hold administrators accountable. Public schools require public participation and intervention. Otherwise, sit back, complain, continue to pay thousands of hard earned dollars as our needed public schools collapse.
Milan, thank you for writing this and your efforts at SBH! Excellent reporting and documentation.
Hamas still has 5 US Citizens hostage and unaccounted for:
Edan Alexander
Sagui Dekel-Chen
Omer Neutra
Hersh Goldberg-Polin
Keith Siegel
Proud father of a YAF kid here. We just visited the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi yesterday there was an exhibit there documenting the historical fact that Iran released all its American hostages within hours of Reagan’s inauguration and him taking the oath of office.
Does anyone wonder why that was? I don’t because I was there. We had just elected a president who said what he meant and meant what he said.
And Iran knew it.
Fantastic article! Your strength and perseverance give me hope for your generation.
In a few days, the 200th day of captive terror for the hostages will come and go. Over 1,000 Isrealis were murdered by Hamas on Oct 7th. Over 200 men, women, and children, including infants were taken by Hamas that day. Hamas has never allowed the Red Cross or other humanitarian agencies in to assess the health of the hostages. Some of the hostages are feared to have died in captivity.
I pray God grant the hostages strength to get through these horrific times.
How many political prisoners aka hostages, including children and victims of torture, continue to languish in Israeli prisons? What are their names? How many Americans have been killed by Israeli military forces with no accountability whatsoever? Rachel Corrie. The servicemen on the USS Liberty. Shireen Abu Akleh. 78 year old Omar Asad. And many many more. If they happen to be Christian or Muslim instead of Jewish, does God love them less? In Catholicism, the answer is a clear and resounding "no." If a Christian says they do matter less, have they been a victim of the Scofield Reference Bible Psyop, the Satanic Heresy that goes by the oxymoronic name "Christian Zionism"? Would love to find the actual Christian Patriots in this town rather than those who fall on their knees in service to 70+ year ongoing war crime called "Israel." Even the name "Israel" is a deception. Christ said we who follow Him are the New Israel, not some atheist anti-Christian mendacious maniacs orchestrating a genocidal land grab in the Holy Land. I pray the scales may fall from the eyes of all of the deluded Americans who claim to be Christian but fail to follow Christ's most basic teachings. You shall not kill. You shall not steal. The Zionists did not follow these commandments as you can easily see in the rather honest essay by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in his famous essay called "The Iron Wall." May God forgive us for what we have allowed our country to be used for in The Holy Land, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, and Yemen at the behest of the Israel First crowd. May God give us the courage to tell the truth so that we can at least try to avert WW3 before it is too late.
Great article !
We need to continue to expose the darkness
See if the Noozhawk will run your piece
I think all the SB “news” outlets are corrupted and controlled by the progressive godless narrative
That is why I read and write for the SB Current
Wow how proud your parents must be! You are courageous and should be held as an example of what free speech should be! Ashamed everyday of most liberals in Santa Barbara!
Bravo. As a published writer and SBHS alum, I’d say you’ve got a bright future. Keep writing. The pen is mightier…
Shall we share this situation with local publications: the Independent, Montecito Journal, etc? Will they print it? Likely no, but we should see. Both are biased uni-party views. The censorship of conservative speech on campuses across the nation has reached fever pitch. WHY are these views censored and WHO is driving it? WHAT is their end game? As the public watches a former POTUS and current Presidential candidate taken OFF the campaign trail by a preposterous and petty court case, his opponent (the current POTUS) hits the trail, adopting the campaign platform of the former POTUS … presenting it as his own. The public sleeps, the media implies ‘nothing to see here’ by saying nothing. Benjamin Franklin said it all, didn’t he? “A Republic … if you can keep it .”
Thank you for bringing to light the oppression of free speech at our public schools.
It’s something I know I have spoken to school editors and Principals which is basically talking to a wall of denial.
The Demicrats are indoctrinating children, forcing them to listen to one opinion and refusing to allow students to express their free speech if it goes against the indoctrination narrative.
Wake up parents. You need to be on top of your kids. Schools are like drug dealers operating in plain sight in street corners corrupting your children.
Saddened to say , welcome to the real world Milan . Schools have been a place where they have been indoctrinated the minds of children for many decades starting in college and then going to high schools and now elementary. But more people and parents are waking up to these tactics that have brainwashed most . If you know what you want to do in life , forget going to college save your parents money and pick a vocational school or do a apprenticeship in your area of interest. You will learn a whole heck of a lot more and keep your sanity ,in this crazy mixed up world.
You are off to a better start then most at your age , because your mind is still yours .
Great article. Living (surviving) in Santa Barbara (south county) is a challenge to say the least. It is the most closed minded, abusive, abyss place to live. They say they are inclusive, but only to their like thinking clones. Put on your armor when you go, out for you will need it.
Just curious but what is Islamaphobic about telling the truth about Hamas?
This young student is more informed,smarter and has more courage than all of the staff at Santa Barbara high school!
Congratulations to the parents of this student!
Well, we don't have the original article to see if the "truth" was told about Hamas, and Milan should have the right to have his views printed, even if they are Islamophobic or incorrect. But to give you one way of how parroting right wing news talking points about Hamas, even factually correct ones, can give the appearance of being "Islamophobic" is to imply that the conflict started on Oct 7, 2024 when Gazans have been living under siege and closure conditions since 2006, a period that has also included several "operations" with powerful murderous aerial bombardments. This is further leaving to the side that many Gazans are refugees expelled from Israel in 1948 and barred from returning due to not being Jewish. To put up a display to only mark the taking of Israeli hostages implies a lack of concern for the thousands of Palestinians, most of whom are Muslim, kept in detention without trial or conviction in Israeli prisons. If you see Palestinians as animals living in garbage as people like Ben Shapiro say or as "Amalek" as several Israeli officials including PM Netanyahu have said, then you are displaying a troubling level of dehumanization and bigotry against the Palestinian people. I believe it is better to allow people like Ben Shapiro and Netanyahu to expose their genocidal beliefs so that we can know how demonic and dangerous they are. I think the editors at The Forge are making a mistake. And it is also true that labeling opinions or a biased framing of events as "Islamophobic" or "anti-Semitic" is making a claim about the motives of the writer and always an ad hominem logical fallacy that should be never used to censor or cancel anyone. But if you want to try and understand *why* people feel that it is Islamophobic, I can help you understand that. While those who have embibed the DEI brainwashing are more honest about the roots and nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict than those who claim to be American Patriots yet ignorantly put Israel's interests first, both are dangerously anti-American in their willingness to go to censorship rather than debate as a way of shaping the discourse. We who care about freedom must be vigilant against this dangerous trend, even when it is being done by members of our own political camp. I hope you will join me in standing against our US state and federal governments using emotion to justify eroding our first amendment rights on college campuses as they silence students and professors deemed pro-Palestine or "pro-Hamas" and invoke the fallacious state department adopted definition of anti-Semitism that claims it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel.
I am sorry, but not surprised to read your thoughtful accounting of the one-sided liberties that you are experiencing and currently surrounds all of us. When Donald Trump told us that the media was the number one enemy of the people, he wasn’t wrong. This dangerous turn of the media towards propaganda will bring this great nation down if allowed to continue. American citizens need to wake up to the fact (and they seem to be, slowly but surely) that our taxpayer dollars are being used to create generations of Communists/Marxists that despise all that America stands for. Sadly those brainwashed in this process have no idea that they are being used as a tool by an insatiable, power hungry government that will eat their own once they have served their singular purpose.
Keep pressing forward with your wonderful writing, our true democracy depends upon it.
The most important speech to be protected by the first amendment is speech that might make some feel uncomfortable, that might challenge their beliefs. It seems that the school paper does support democracy and consequently it's policies support the majority opinion. When the left says they support democracy what they mean is that they support their opinions to the exclusion of all others. Your piece is well written and should be published. Milan, I can tell you that this is a small bump in a road which will lead to great things for you. As the geat Donald Trump said the best revenge is success. I would not be surprised if you receive a job offer from someone who reads your writing. If you want to make some money you can help me work on my 1966 mustang. I can teach you how to rebuild an engine.
Excellent and very courageous! Calla Jones Corner
Milan, Disappointing and sad to read your piece but, unfortunately, not surprising. What I find gross about the pro-Hamas fervor is the lack of historical understanding re: a "Palisteninan" state and radical Islam. Has no one heard of the Peel Commission, the 1948 UN resolution or later efforts all that offered a separate state that were summarily rejected. Has no one read Oriana Fallaci about radical Islam's desire to eradicate infidels (not to also mention the LGBTQ community, women's rights and modern society)? Your school administrators are cowards but, thankfully, you're not! Speak truth and history will reward you--thank you for speaking-up, i wish more younger folks did.
Why should they Palestinians have a separate state? They lived in the land for centuries but they should just accept Israel invading and displacing them? The Israelis aren't that unlike the immigrants entering America.
Many who lived in this area prior to the creation of the state of Israel, very willingly sold their land, which they viewed as arid and worthless, to Jewish buyers seeking legal residence in their former homeland.
What future grief we could have avoided had those normal land transactions continued to a critical mass. But the urgency caused by the post-Holcaust horrors did speed up the international Jewish homeland process. However, there does need to be recognition that a good deal of area now located within the borders of Israel was previously transferred legally, and not by force, international edict, squatting and/or occupation.
"The military occupation of Arab-owned lands started in the first few months of 1948 and was stepped up in April of that year, when whole towns like Beisan, Jaffa, Acre, Lydda and Ramleh and the Arab sections of the towns of Haifa, Safad and Jerusalem were taken over by the Haganah forces.8/ In May of the same year – 1948 – in view of the enormous number of Palestinians that had been driven from their land and property by the military operations, the United Nations appointed a Mediator, one of whose main tasks was to promote the well-being of the inhabitants of Palestine with the aid of the United Nations specialized agencies. In December of the same year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 194 (III), the operative part of which called upon the Provisional Government of Israel to permit and facilitate the return of the Palestinians to their homes, their land and their property."
Acquisition of Land in Palestine via the UN's website.
What did you think about yesterday's UN vote regarding the entity called Palestine?
Just learned about it now, it's pretty saddening. 12 of 15 member nations supported the resolution and yet the United States caves into to Israel's wants as usual.
And the "United States" was taking direction from exactly who in the Biden administration to cast this vote?
Perhaps we need a moratorium on anyone making government decisions in our names during the last six months leading up to the next election.Fraught with too much conflicts of interests.
BTW: I support the US decision but they were certainly not doing this to get my vote. Nor even do the right thing. One suspects raw election year politics was behind this Biden UN vote.
Very well stated Milan...sadly the left has done a thorough job of canceling forums to express one's opinions. What your Principal Mr. Razo and others forget, they work for us. Their paychecks come from hard working Americans and their opinions DO NOT MATTER while at work. They can express their liberal views all they wish when they leave the campus. Of course, that's not the case in many schools and certainly not at SBHS. Mr. Razo etal. should get a letter from... a division of the ACLJ (there is one in Santa Barbara I believe). "Jay Sekulow is widely regarded as one of the foremost free speech and religious liberties litigators in the United States" Just saying...Blessings
Courageous efforts Milan. Sorry to hear a label like Islamophobic hurled at you. Unthoughtful idealogues will dismiss you because of it, but that is a demographic we hardly expected to reach anyhow. It is unfortunate that one party has to be the champion of free speech, what should be a universal value.