Milford Will Get 'Select Board,' A Dystopian Change For Some

MILFORD, MA — Milford will soon join the dozens of other towns across Massachusetts that have changed from using the term "Board of Selectmen" to the gender-neutral "Select Board."

Town Meeting approved the change during the Jan. 7 session after pushing the matter off the warrant last summer. The article was sponsored by member Lauren Wilton, who said the change could encourage more women to run for the town's top governing board.

"Any woman can run for Board of Selectmen, but the name implies she should not," Wilton said during the meeting.

Only one woman in Milford history has served on the Board of Selectmen. Marie Parente was elected in 1972 and served until 1981, when she ascended to the state House. Only two other women in recent memory have run for the board, Wilton said.

Town Meeting approved the change in two separate votes. The first vote changes "Board of Selectmen" to "Select Board" wherever it's mentioned in state laws and passed 93 to 26. The second vote, to change to "Select Board" in the town, passed 95 to 18.

Apart from the "no" votes, there were several members of Town Meeting who spoke out against the change.

Noel Bon Tempo compared the change to George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," which includes a plot point where a totalitarian state eliminates words from the English language as a form of thought control.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?" Bon Tempo said reading a passage from the book. "In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it."

Member Michael Visconti also spoke against the change, saying that anyone who's uncomfortable with "Selectmen" should ignore it like the grade-school rhyme "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me."

But many spoke in favor of the change, including all three members of the current Board of Selectmen. Close to 100 other towns around the state have moved toward gender-neutral language for town boards recently, including Ashland, Hopkinton and Holliston.

"I think it's just a matter of time, and just the right thing to do," Selectmen Chair Will Kingkade said.