CreatorScape, an arts and literature fair originally planned for April 26, 2024, hosted jointly by One Long Story (OLS) and Youth Arts Movement (YAM), was canceled a day prior by MHS administration for “security reasons,” OLS president Kate Chua said. A few of CreatorScape’s vendors planned to donate proceeds to the nonprofit charity Care For Gaza, which school administration cited as a potential security threat, Chua said.
OLS and YAM were forced to cancel at the last minute after preparing for the event for months, YAM secretary Lantern Nguyen said. Ultimately, OLS and YAM decided to modify CreatorScape so that vendor proceeds were no longer donated to charity and scheduled the new version of the event to May 17, Nguyen said.
In the original CreatorScape, the charity supporting Gaza was a minor part of the event, with the main focus being on art, literature, and the vendors, Chua said. Even in the event’s marketing, the Care For Gaza charity was briefly mentioned at the bottom of the advertisement, she said.
“I want to stress (that) five vendors were planning to donate to Care For Gaza, which is specifically humanitarian aid and is not a commentary on the political situation between Gaza and Israel,” Chua said. “The fact is people are dying in Gaza right now—it’s a huge crisis (…) and for (CreatorScape) to be shut down brings into question what other fundraisers are going to be shut down and is sending a statement about what issues are allowed to be talked about and fundraised for on campus.”
Principal and Chief Innovator of Milpitas High School and New Campus Programs Greg Wohlman told YAM advisor Emily Moore through email on April 23 that mentions of Gaza and Palestine would not be allowed in advertisements or at the event and should be generalized as humanitarian aid or relief, YAM officer Leslie Dong said.
Chua and Nguyen met with Wohlman the next school day to discuss the reasoning behind removing mentions of Gaza and the logistics surrounding that decision, Chua said. Later that day on April 24, Moore informed the OLS and YAM officers that CreatorScape could not be held as per Wohlman’s decision, Chua said. All of the officers were shocked by the escalation of the school’s stance regarding CreatorScape, Chua added.
YAM “proposed that they wanted to do a Care For Gaza fundraiser and then that was included in the event because some of their vendors wanted to donate their proceeds to Care For Gaza,” Chua said.
The officers of both clubs believe that the security concern cited by administration was merely a hypothetical threat for anyone attending CreatorScape, Chua said. The decision to cancel CreatorScape was too extreme, she said.
Past club fundraisers for Gaza “had zero issues in terms of security, and when we asked him (Wohlman) to name a specific instance, in our meeting with the admin, they (school administration) couldn’t name anything,” Chua said. “The best they could name was something that happened in 2020, in which people were upset about the school support against Trump.”
The combined CreatorScape event planning effort started in March when Chua and Nguyen both realized they wanted to host a similar event, Chua said. The original event included 25 vendors, multiple guest speakers, and potentially more than a hundred visitors, she added.
“We were really saddened by (the decision to cancel CreatorScape), but we also know there was no winning with this, so we asked if we could remove Gaza from (the event flyer) and still have the event, given that vendors worked really hard to prepare everything for the event and they (school administration) said no,” Chua said.
All the officers worked tirelessly to set up the event, from reaching out and coordinating with guest speakers and vendors to worrying about logistics, Chua said. The officers were frustrated by the lack of communication from the administration and how all of their decisions were announced via email and through their advisor rather than in an in-person meeting, Chua added.
“I understand their perspective, but again, I think it was an extremely foolish decision to not only cancel (CreatorScape) but to imply that there is some kind of physical threat that could not be amended by either censor (of advertisements and posters) or security,” Nguyen said.
Wohlman was unavailable for an interview for this story despite repeated requests.