Lawrence elected officials and civic professionals speaking during a panel Monday identified trends they say disrupt the public discourse necessary to make progress.
Amber Sellers, Lawrence city commissioner; Kelly Jones, Lawrence school board member as well as candidate running for reelection in November; Patrick Kelly, Douglas County Commission chair; and Rich Lockhart, chief of the Lawrence Police Department shared reflections on their roles as public officials. Kyle Velte, University of Kansas School of Law faculty member, added legal perspectives and knowledge.
The League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas County hosted the panel event, “Bringing Civility Back to Civic Discourse.”
Co-Vice President Sonja Czarnecki moderated the discussion, taking questions from the packed audience in addition to prewritten prompts.
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“Ongoing political violence at the national level and alarming levels of aggression in public meetings and in communication with elected officials have unfortunately made this topic more timely than ever,” Czarnecki said.
Since February, general public comment happens at the very end of Lawrence school board meetings instead of the beginning.
The board made modifications to its decorum policy and pushed up the deadline to sign up for public comment, because of explicit language and disruptions to business by frequent commenters.
“I would not run a board meeting without a police officer in the room, because I am concerned about the safety of individuals in that space,” Jones said.
The public comment change fueled some beliefs that Jones and other board members aimed to limit free speech, which she said isn’t true. Soon, clips from board meetings began circulating social media platforms.
Jones said she now receives regular threats, often rooted in misogyny, via voicemail, email and other messaging. The senders are nationwide.
School, city and county leaders often forward messages to Lockhart’s department.
“Y’all would be surprised that some of the emails that people send, they’re not crimes,” Lockhart said. “But they are the coarsest emails you’ve ever read.”
Sellers holds a unique perspective as one of the few elected officials in Lawrence and Douglas County who are Black women. She made history in 2021 as the first Black woman on the Lawrence City Commission.
Microaggressions from people living in this town cause her to challenge the “Unmistakably Lawrence” identity, she said.
“I think folks go to these spaces to say the things that they wouldn’t say with their full chest in front of me, or they wouldn’t say if they knew that it came with a fine or fee or jail time,” Sellers said. “The best thing I can do is to challenge those in the community to get to know your community and to be able to identify what community is.”
Sellers said she believes people tend to limit themselves to public comment but that engagement extends beyond those three minutes. She encouraged people to create those spaces, or foster existing ones, void of government.
Kelly asked people to consider their expectation of a safe space for civil discourse — if it’s to hear “the things you want to hear, or just the things that you don’t want to hear,” he questioned. Public comment is not designed for discussions, he said.
“I will say, the pressure on someone who is in an elected position to create a space for civil discussion is pretty daunting, right, especially when there’s specific case law about what we can and cannot do, and multiple interpretations of that case law,” Kelly said.
There are general principles around time, place and manner, but guidance for local governments is largely unclear.
Velte said First Amendment jurisprudence is a “hot mess” right now, and the U.S. Supreme Court can’t even agree on interpretations of free speech.
Lockhart said it’s an elected official’s responsibility to model civil discourse. The International Association of Chiefs of Police recently passed a resolution calling for political leaders to tone down their rhetoric.
He said the public can work to find shared values, keep discourse in person rather than online, and expand their social circles.
“One of the things I tell [new officers] is, if you look around and all of your friends are police officers, you need to get a hobby that doesn’t involve police officers,” Lockhart said. “If you only hang out with people that are like you, that’s the way your world looks.”
Jones said it was difficult to encourage folks to run for office in the upcoming election, considering the risks, but the reward for her is giving back to public education. Sellers agreed that public service is her contribution and that anyone considering public office should let their motivation be doing their part.
Velte said hope in future leadership isn’t lost.
“I see hope every day in the faces of my law students,” she said. “They’ve come to KU Law just like students have come to law school all around the country in a time where the rule of law is up for grabs, when democracy is in peril, and they’re here to preserve that.”
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
Nathan Kramer (he/him), a multimedia student journalist for The Lawrence Times since August 2024, is a senior at Free State High School. He is also a news photo editor for Free State’s student publication, where he works as a videographer, photographer and motion designer. See more of his work for the Times here.
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