A high school student had her closing speech at her graduation ceremony cut short as she began to speak about sexual misconduct.
Attendees chanted “let her speak” after Lulabel Seitz from California had the microphone cut when she referred to students speaking out against sexual assault.
“I thought this is a public school with freedom of speech,” Ms Seitz told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
“This is for my class that stood up and said ‘let her speak'. Even if the administration doesn’t give me a mic, I still want to speak.”
Ms Seitz has since uploaded the full speech online. She was set to say: “And even learning on a campus in which some people defend perpetrators of sexual assault and silence their victims, we didn’t let that drag us down.
“The class of 2018 has demonstrated time and time again that we may be a new generation but we are not too young to speak up, to dream, and to create change.”
The principal of the school, David Stirrat, said that students had to have their speeches pre-approved and were warned that if they deviated from it they would be cut off.
“In Lulabel’s case, her approved speech didn’t include any reference to an assault,” Mr Stirrat told The Washington Post.
“We certainly would have considered such an addition, provided no individuals were named or defamed.”
It comes after students from Holy Cross High School – a Catholic school in Covington, Kentucky – were not allowed to give their speeches at their high school graduation for wanting to mention the Parkland shooting.
The school principal explained that in an “emergency meeting” the local diocese had deemed the students’ speeches inappropriate.
Christian Bales and student council president Katherine Frantz felt their speech had merit so they delivered it outside after the ceremony through a megaphone.
