Protestors, Supporters of Principal Clash at Olean School Board Meeting

A raucous school board meeting took place in Olean last night as over 100 people gathered to protest and support remarks made by a school principal.

Olean Intermediate School Principal Joel Witcher, who is also a pastor at a dominionist church in Allegany, posted a series of videos to Facebook in which he made anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim remarks, and said that students with mental illnesses and diabetes were “possessed by demons,” and saying that his church had “infiltrated” the school system.

Sean Obergfell, pastor of the Believers Chapel in Olean, criticized the board for what he called private remarks in a house of worship, and asked if they were going to punish staff members of other faiths for their beliefs.

“Are you going to go into every one of their practices of worship and come against them? Are you going to do that? Because that’s what’s happening here.”

Olean resident Tim Sherlock countered that by uploading the remarks to a public forum, Witcher had made it something other than private worship.

“Your First Amendment does not protect you when your speech incites hate and riots. Your First Amendment is not protected as private when you flood public fields and social media. You’re no longer private.”

When local activist Leo Wolters Tejara tried to present the board with recommendations for avoiding these situations in the future, members of Believer’s Chapel heckled them and shouted them down.

After the disruption ended, School Superintendent Rick Moore said that the board was handling the situation.

“This Board of Education will work through this problem. We almost already have a solution. I want everyone to understand when they go out of here to be friends, to be respectful of one another.”

As of noon Wednesday, an online petition calling for Witcher’s firing had gained over 1,000 signatures.