An advisory task force will collect community input on a potential name change for Seaman Unified School District 345 and return to the school board with a report, but not a recommendation, on such a change, the Seaman Board of Education decided on Monday evening.
After an hour of split public comment, the board voted to accept superintendent Steve Noble s proposal to create that advisory task force to guide the community conversation on a potential name change.
The board had not yet discussed a name change but had been under intense public pressure to broach the topic after an October report from two student journalists at the school confirmed rumors that district namesake Fred Seaman was a leader in the Topeka chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
He found few friends by being himself.
“I was trying to prove myself instead of just being myself,” Patterson told The Capital-Journal. “I think it was basically my junior year when I decided I really just needed to be myself instead of trying to fit into a stereotype.”
Now a recent graduate from the high school, Patterson said he reflects back on what eventually became a lonely experience at Seaman, and on how most people’s perceptions of who he was supposed to be, came not from a place of malice, but one of ignorance.
And it’s a similar perception he sees when it comes to discussions of the district’s namesake, Fred Seaman, and his role as an exalted cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan.