Slant Magazine

I received the following e-mail from Jeff Kuhr, the film/media teacher at Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Kansas.

"I'm writing to share with you a video my students recently made—a lip dub to Kim Wilde's "Kids in America." To me, and I know I'm slightly biased because I'm their teacher, I think it's a great example of student filmmaking, school spirit, and contagious joy. It's a video that means a lot to my students and our school because, in many ways, it shows all of us at our best—working together to create something special.

"It's also something more. Three weeks ago, the video was in the midst of going viral, receiving around 130,000 views and positive comments from all over the world. Then, the video was hacked by some students from the school across town, hacked in the worst way, audio replaced with death metal and worse, annotated with horrible homophobic comments. Obviously, we had to take the video down, thus losing the views, comments, and a little bit of our hearts.

"However, something positive emerged from this—and that was my students' determination to take a stand against hate and homophobia and repost the video, starting over as it were—a slightly small, yet still defiant gesture against those who hurt them and for the spirit of community and diversity. We're hoping the video can bring people the same amount of joy it originally brought us."

Happy to share it, Jeff. And terrific work on the video, all!

Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.