Kashuv Catches Broward School Board Member's Embarrassing Online Behavior
Apparently, not all the cowards of Broward County are in the sheriff’s office.
In the South Florida county’s latest leap into the limelight since the February mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School made it a focal point for the national gun rights debate, one of its school board members is taking heat on social media for how she treated one very public survivor of that shooting.
And school board member Rosalind Osgood isn’t looking so good at all.
In a Twitter posting Sunday, Kyle Kashuv, a junior at the Parkland school who has emerged as a spokesman for Second Amendment rights, blasted Osgood for blocking him from her Twitter account.
He said he’s never contacted her in the first place.
Why is a member of the Broward school board blocking me when I have never contacted her? Pathetic! pic.twitter.com/RvUTFYFru7
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) April 29, 2018
Osgood, an ordained minister with the New Mount Olive Baptists Church, apparently hadn’t made any public response to Kashuv by Sunday afternoon (her Twitter account is protected). But there are a couple of publicly known facts that could give an answer to his question.
For one thing, Osgood is a Democrat, meaning she’s aligned with a political party that has a notorious distaste for listening to anyone whose thinking deviates from its orthodoxy even the slightest (and Kashuv’s respect for the Constitution definitely deviates from Democrat contempt for the country’s founding document).
For another, she seems to have established a reputation for not being very open to Broward residents during her six years on the board — including a stint as chairwoman.
In 2016, an online newsletter called BrowardBeat, co-founded by Buddy Nevins, a retired political reporter for the Sun-Sentinel, called out Osgood for what Nevins called her “disgraceful refusal to listen to the public.”
“Osgood likes the perks of public office, which allows her to act like a Big Shot,” Nevins wrote.
“She doesn’t like the responsibilities, which includes listening to the public … whatever their ‘tone’ and language.”
On Sunday, responses to Kashuv’s Twitter post were just as scathing about Osgood. While a smattering criticized the student and his outspoken defense of the Second Amendment, most were harshly critical of a public official exhibiting such embarrassing online behavior.
I can only assume @ReverendRos knows the corruption runs Deep in @browardschools so Deep Their Pockets are Full of the Money that should have been used for School Safety. She Fears you. @POTUS @realDonaldTrump @BetsyDeVosED #MAGA
— fabbymj (@babyboomerMJ) April 29, 2018
Another cowardly lib who can’t stand honest debate#KeepOnKyle
— scribeofsolomon (@scribeofsolomon) April 29, 2018
This is shady. Who is she on the board to represent? Apparently she doesn’t plan on representing you.
— The Girl (@litmom45) April 29, 2018
And that last one asks the question that really matters.
Osgood, like all public officials in the representative democracy we call the United States, enjoys the salary and power of her position only because of the people she is supposed to represent.
As a student in the Broward School District, Kashuv is one of the people Osgood is supposed to be representing, but she clearly has no interest in hearing from him.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean she has to agree with him. Plenty of Republican officeholders have liberal Democrats among their constituents. But for Osgood to block a student without any obvious reason is troubling behavior by an elected official — and embarrassing for the school district she is supposed to be leading.
It’s another blemish for Broward. The county sheriff’s office covered itself in shame on the day of the Stoneman Douglas shooting, when the deputy assigned to cover the school remained outside instead of confronting the gunman. Other deputies responding to the scene also failed to enter the building where the shooting was taking place.
The reality is, Kashuv’s has been one of the few sane voices out of Broward that have gotten national notice since the Parkland shooting. And the prospect of a confrontation with him evidently has even elected officials drawing back.
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