A Staples High School student offered some thoughts on a podcast last week — and ignited an online firestorm. Today, he describes the aftermath of that podcast.
I am a junior at Staples High School, and over the last week my life has been turned upside down.
I am escorted to class every day by school administrators. Classmates I sit beside have told me, in writing, that they wish to gang rape and kill me. My retail job has let me go, claiming of course that it was entirely unrelated.
My home address along with my father’s phone number have been posted online. He now fields a near endless stream of calls from strangers detailing their perspectives on his son.
I have loved ideas my whole life. I launched a newsletter my freshman year, and a podcast over the past summer. I gave my perspective on the situation at Cornell last Tuesday, which was similar to voices as politically opposed as what “The View”’s Sunny Hostin and “The Daily Wire”’s Ben Shapiro both espoused: that under New York state law, and with the evidence given to the district attorney in 2024, the decision not to prosecute was not unreasonable.
My tone may have been too cold, my wording imprecise, but nothing that could possibly merit what happened over the course of the week.
Let’s be fully clear: Rape and sexual assault are among the most disgusting things that occur in our society. The video itself labeled what occurred as “morally wrong” and “disgusting.”
My intention was never to minimize or denigrate anyone who falls victim to these situations. Yet the people who ostensibly claim to share that position were willing to threaten me with becoming a victim of it myself.
I have handled the backlash the best I am able. I cooperated fully with law enforcement and the administration at Staples High School. I have ignored the streams of texts and calls, and deleted Instagram off my phone to avoid obsessing over the situation.
I have attended my classes and walked into school despite being told not to go, both by those looking out for my best interests and bad actors seeking to intimidate me.
My current situation has become untethered from the Cornell case itself. It is a story of a 16-year-old kid who expressed an opinion that, whatever issues in presentation may have precipitated the response, was not outside the Overton Window.
The response was not counter arguments. It was hardly anyone seeking to educate me, understand me, or engage in the sort of discourse that only serves to help make our communities better.
The response was doxxing and death threats.
What has stuck with me most this week is the gap between the unflinching vitriol of the online mob, and the everyday good of the people who know me. What has stuck with me are the friends who have stood by my side, despite facing immense judgment for such a stance.
What has stuck with me are the people who, in the days since the night the clip was posted, have come to me to apologize for their threats and harassment.
I have a teacher I expected to disagree with on nearly every political issue, and I probably do. But I would now say I agree with her on everything that matters. Before class, she spoke to me privately to make sure her classroom would be a safe space for me, too.
It is those people who expressed a commitment to integrity, values and principles, concepts steadier and more important than partisanship. It is a commitment to how you treat people, your peers and neighbors, including those you disagree with.
I have seen people who vehemently disagree with me show more integrity than those who stand by every word I have said. And to say I am forever grateful to those people would be an understatement.
I am not asking everyone to agree with what I said in the video, or any political stances I hold at all. The beauty of living in a town, and a nation, where people have such a diversity of opinions and are allowed to speak their minds freely, is exactly what drew me to being so enamored with ideas at such a young age.
What I would ask is simpler: Let dissent be accompanied by an explanation, not a threat of violence or a doxxing.
Westport is a town that prides itself on being a place that values education and civic participation. If that is true, then it should be the place where a 16-year-old kid can make an argument, however unpopular or poorly expressed, without having his family doxxed, and his little sister living in fear, over it.
That is an entirely apolitical ask, and the bare minimum for a town that wishes to call itself a community.
(“Students Speak” is a forum for all students, who live in or attend school in Westport and Weston. Email submissions to 06880blog@gmail.net. To support this hyper-local blog, click here. Thank you!)
