By KATHLEEN MITCHELL

Recent events, associated with the New London Board of Education's ban on comments concerning Jack Cochran during a public meeting, have caused me to give some serious consideration to a theory that has been running through my brain for a number of years.

While a number of those present cheered me on as I chose to talk about the forbidden topic, others were not at all pleased, feeling that I was totally out of line and had no right to speak after we had all been advised against doing so.

Enter my theory.

There are three distinct groups of people in New London, as there are in cities and towns across America: Rule Makers, Rule Breakers and Those In Between.

Rule Makers, in the main, consist of politicians and sovereigns, whose function it is to pass laws (make rules) that may initially be designed to benefit citizens but ultimately benefit the leaders and serve to maintain their power base. The purpose of the Rule Breakers is to question and, if need be, challenge those rules. The primary role of Those In Between is, in part, to preserve the influence and authority of the Rule Makers.

One common means of accomplishing this is by posting fabrications and/or libelous and negative comments, anonymously, on Reader's Comments sections of newspapers across the country, causing other potential Those In Betweeners to have reservations about their own thoughts and join the witch hunt. I mention this only to point out that just because the Rule Makers determine, as in the case of the Board of Education on April 23, that certain subject matter will not be open for discussion does not, in fact, mean that those issues may not be addressed by those willing to be Rule Breakers.

This is America, after all, where we enjoy certain freedoms, notably for our example, freedom of speech. There are some people who have attempted to hold me responsible for the loss of their "right to speak about educational issues" at the Board of Education meeting, instead of the Board of Education, where the blame rightly belongs.

Perhaps those individuals are unaware of a number of important facts.

The Board of Education is a public agency, as defined in Connecticut General Statutes, and, according to the statutes, the meetings of all public agencies "shall be open to the public."

Although the events of the recent evening were not, in the main, a freedom of speech issue for me, as one attorney I spoke with told me, "If the board has a public comment period, then I don't think they could limit the topics on which members of the public wanted to speak. That would raise some serious First Amendment concerns."

Be that as it may, my main concern was, and is, my strongly held belief that the public has a right to speak during the public comment session of a regularly scheduled meeting of a public agency. These protections were codified to prevent exactly the kind of attempt at stifling dissenting opinion that was the aim of the board's ban on public comment.

The ACLU-CT filed suit, in 2007, against the town of Canterbury in the case of Jeanette Kildea, a teacher who was banned from speaking during the public comment period at Canterbury Board of Selectmen meetings. The case was settled in favor of Ms. Kildea, who believed that citizen participation is the lifeblood of democracy at the local level.

The New London Board of Education is a public agency and has certain responsibilities and obligations to the public, of which I am a member. It is not, as some would have you believe, the other way around. All elected officials serve at the pleasure of the voters who put them there and may, in November of this year, just as easily be removed by a disenchanted electorate.

KATHLEEN MITCHELL IS A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER WHO LIVES IN NEW LONDON.