Hate comes to Saranac Lake
Saranac Lake’s school district is grappling with what appears to be a truly horrific case of racial bullying that went on for months right under the noses of teachers and school officials.
The final straw came on June 21st, when a 12-year-old girl’s backpack was broken into and vandalized, allegedly by other middle school children.
They allegedly used the victim’s deodorant stick to write a racial slur — including the N-word — on a wall. According to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, school officials failed to completely clean up the graffiti for more than a week.
For those of us with children in the Saranac Lake district, the ugliness of this case comes as a terrible shock. My son Nicholas, who is 14, just graduated from Petrova Middle School.
When I asked him about the case, and about his experience with racial- and other hate-inspired behavior at the school, he seemed baffled.
Frankly, so was I. In February 2001, I reported on the district’s push to drop its ‘racist’ mascot name — “Redskins” was changed to “Red Storm.”
While many alums opposed the change — which was eventually voted through — the vast majority of the rhetoric during that debate was civil, respectful and responsible.
I’ve written before about my own experiences as the victim of bullying and I’ve praised the Saranac Lake district for being aggressive about creating a healthy, safe environment for kids.
This case suggests that a lot more work needs to be done. In a letter published on its website, school district officials acknowledge as much.
“Beginning immediately, we will review every protocol and policy related to bullying and harassment. We will examine and revise how we teach tolerance and diversity to our children. We will work with our staff to make certain that all children are valued and that no child comes to school afraid. We cannot allow what happened to this child happen to another.”
Fair enough. But I’m not sure that even now school district officials understand the gravity of their failure in allowing one of our kids to face this kind of attack over months and perhaps even years.
In an interview with the Plattsburgh Press-Republican, Superintendent Gerald Goldman said administrators have “got to become a little more cognizant of what that culture [outside the classroom] is going to look like.”
A little bit more cognizant won’t cut it. And a review of future policies may not give us the information we need about what went wrong here.
According to the child’s mother, at least some of this harassment was reported early on to Petrova’s dean of students.
The district needs to find out exactly what teachers, counselors and administrators knew about this case as it was unfolding.
If they were aware of the tone and severity of these racist and bigoted attacks, we need to know: Why was nothing done sooner? Were existing policies followed? And if not, who is responsible?
Finally, there is a painful question here that goes beyond policies and protocols.
If a racial slur can remain graffitied on the wall of one of our North Country schools for days without being washed off — and without triggering serious alarms — what does that say about the broader culture in our schools?
I’m not talking now about the culture among middle-schoolers. I’m talking about the view of every adult — parents, teachers, administrators — who walks those halls.
Sadly, dealing with bullying in schools is a very gray area. Depending upon the specific situation, school districts hands are often tied when attempting to deal with bullying with typical punishments like detention, suspensions, etc. For instance with bullying that occurs outside the typical school hours of operation or on-line (Facebook, Myspace, text messages, etc…) and then spill over into the school. Districts have actually been sued and lost in court if they infringe on students rights over issues that occur outside traditional school hours.
In this case, I’m a bit shocked that the racial slur was allowed to remain on the wall for several days. And while I think it’s too early to judge based upon what’s been reported thus far, it would seem the bullying was brought to the attention of the administration.
I think a good start is making parents aware of this ever increasing problem. Like many problems in education, parent involvement is crucial. Parents need to take more responsibility for not only watching out for bullying of their child, but also their child engaging in the bullying of other students. And law enforcement needs to be engaged as well as legislation created and backed by court precedence that gives districts the tools necessary to deal with bullying.
A positive development with this issue is that more and more districts are beginning to take it very seriously. More and more staff training is occurring at both the teacher and administrative level. And awareness of the problem is increasing with parents and the general public. Soon, legislation may be in place that gives the schools and law enforcement the tools to deal more effectively with this ever growing problem.
I agree all such problems start with adults, so called adults. I do disagree with the idea that bullying is an ever growing problem. It is ancient.
Bullying usually starts with one person picking on another (adults do this too) and then the sheep join in until someone stands up against the person who started it.
You can pass whatever laws you want to pass so that “such a thing never happens again” but it will never end until someone stands up to the one or ones who started it.
Sometimes, maybe most times, the best person to stand up is the one who is being bullied because if someone else does the standing up, the person being bullied is often marked as a weak cry baby.
Sorry to make these points but we are talking about a problem with human nature and laws will not change human nature.
Pete,
It is an ever increasing problem. The reason is that much of it now starts on-line or electronically. Students who would never have had the courage to bully other students, can now do it on-line with relative ambiguity. Much the way adults utilize technology and say things they otherwise wouldn’t in a face to face discussion, young people are more apt to bully other young people when sitting behind a computer.
And I’m not advocating passing laws to end bullying. That’s completely naive. What I’m suggesting is giving school districts and law enforcement the power to give real consequences to those who bully students. Punishment with a real bite and supported by court precedence so districts aren’t afraid of being sued by parents who think they’ve violated their child’s right to free speech (which on-line outside of school bullying can be considered).
You think it is human nature to be hateful?
Bullying is a learned behavior. We need to learn more about how children learn this behavior. There is an abundance of information available about ‘Relational Aggression”, (the official name for ‘bullying’). It exists in workplace cultures, community cultures, institutional cultures. It is a cyclical behavioral model that is learned, at very young ages, is perpetuated and re-learned … kind of a folk culture phenomenon in that it is passed from generation to generation. It merges seamlessly with a number of personality disorders. It has roles and personality types to play each role in the maintaining and perpetuation of what turns out to be a highly organmized culture. It exists at every level of our social, economic and political lives in the United States.
The first thing that we all need to do is call attention to this insidious problem through identification and education. The information is out there. The element that is missing, is the will to treat this as the social disease that it is and move aggressively to end ‘Relational Aggression’ cultures. How many of us have horror stories about the humiliation, degradation, shame, violence denial and abuse that we have either witnessed or experienced in our lives by the cultish practitioners of this dark art?
The radio report mentioned that kids had set up a Facebook group calling for the girl to commit suicide. The n-word is bad enough but telling a girl to kill herself? Sickening.
Bullying is all too often related to social groups and peer pressure. There is a group dynamic in all human activity but it’s much more pronounced in teenagers, as they are more independent than little kids but are still in search of their identity. Some kids learn bullying from their parents. But some fundamentally good kids with good parenting just get caught up in trying to fit in.
Teachers, administrators and coaches, most of whom really do care for the kids they work with, have trouble distinguishing between ordinary amicable teasing and harmful bullying… even more so now since a lot of happens online and the adults lack that context.
An arguement can be made that it’s human nature to target those perceived as “other”. In some languages, “enemy” and “stranger” are the same word. Those perceived as different often become the target of hateful behavior.
Also, there seems to be a need to perceive oneself as superior to someone or some class of people. Makes us feel better.
If that’s a tendency toward hateful behavior, than perhaps it is human nature. We’re hardwired to protect “Us” versus “them”.
Parent’s i don’t know if this is “cool” or not- but get your kid’s i-phone or what-ever the -heck they are using and read their i.m.’s and texts.
many of you will be shocked at the nature and content.
this school behavior all begins on the social networking sites. and to me, they look like no place for junior high students.
i’ll be the first to admit reading my nieces’s facebook dialouges. ALOT of the girls posts are way too adult for their ages, and the boys are downright disrespectful– and i ratted them all out to their parents. post senders and recievers alike.
whether or not they are upstate rural and farmbound, these kids talk like 35year old inner city ghetto residents. even when they are behaving, being polite, and “just saying hi”
the vernacular is horrible.
many behave like “gangster-hoodlums” that they see everywhere around them in the media….they’re 12 and thirteen years old and they are emulating rap stars, ebonic language using, “jersey shore”, little wayne, lindsay lohan, low- life miscreants. when i witness 11 year olds talking to each other when they think adults are not watching, postulating like a scene from ____(fill in your preferred adult drama) i shake my head and thank god i’m half done with this world– and that i don’t have children.
you parents need to tighten things up.
The big myth here is that bullying is somehow unique to adolescent culture. Teenagers are trying model what they perceive as ‘adult’ culture. Bullying is at it’s worst in adult culture because it is so hard to see … the players are much smoother. Kids are clumsy at imitating adults, so it’s easier to see the behavior. Once again I must implore the reader … Google, “Relational Aggression Cultures”! You need to understand how the problem works before you’re going to fix anything. This is a complicated and insidious thing that can morph into many different shapes to avoid detection or suppression. Adults do it better than anyone and that’s who kids learn it from.
If you want a good example of how the sheep mentality works just as well in adults as in children, just remember Nazi Germany. “Good People” made it all possible.
It was the “good people” who made slavery possible. It is always the “good people” who are at fault.
Let’s reason this out. Let’s try to understand. Let’s pass a law.
“good people” have the perfect disguise
Yes, being hateful is human nature. The strong prey on the weak. Sorry, but the meek don’t inherit the earth, they get buried under it.
You want to keep your lids from being bullied? Home school them. The public school system, IMO, not only supports the bullying culture, it rewards it. By 4th or 5th grade it’s happening.
Hate “comes” to Saranac? As one whose child attends Petrova Middle School, I’ve been aware of bullying based on race, class, and disability for years. At the beginning of this year I had to tell my child that he was no longer allowed to reason with or even talk to a self-declared “neo-Nazi” because it was too dangerous now that the individual was 14. I respect your bafflement and that of your son’s; it implies that your family associates with people who share the values of openness and understanding. But I am a little frustrated with the request to take a stand. Many do. When my son attended elementary school, the bullying problem was so intense that the entire fifth grade staff had weekly meetings on how to deal with a particular group of children. Character education was incorporated into every homeroom. One particular individual had to be escorted to and from the bathroom for a week because he could not be trusted to leave other children alone. I am not employed by Petrova School. I am just a parent. But I have a great deal of respect for the school. They are working with a significant number of damaged families, and they are doing the best they can. They cannot raise these children; they can only try to educate them. (By the way, the racial slur was chalked on the foundation of the school, partially hidden by a bush.)
As I read Brian’s article I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. One would hope that one comment by Mr. Goldman wouldn’t be viewed as the “sum” of what his total message was. We will be doing more than “reviewing policy” and to think otherwise is a slap in the face to the dedicated staff who work hard at providing a safe learning environment for ALL of our children. The school is often serving as “surrogate” parents to many children who aren’t receiving parenting at home. I could share instances where parents refuse to allow counseling for their child of which the school will provide…because the parent thinks the school is quote “being ridiculous” or “it’s overkill….my kid is a good kid”. I am the parent of a 15 year old boy who was also bullied in middle school. I immediately reported the incident to the Dean of Students and the child in question was suspended for one week. The Dean was very clear to my son about reporting any further problems and asked other children who were witnesses to provide him with details. The issue was dealt with and I was happy with the outcome. My son is now entering the 10th grade and after 10 years of being a very involved parent (in the classroom) I can honestly say that our school would not intentionally turn a blind eye to racism, bullying of any kind. I will make this clear….I am not saying our district should not take responsibility for this disgusting incident and work even harder to promote acceptance and re-evaluate some of the programs we have in place…however our district is only a piece of the problem. Our community is outraged (and rightly so!) but we ALL need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we as community members aren’t also part of the problem. The school can’t parent alone. Thank you for your time.
We need to support children’s rights to a safe and healthy school – which can mean asking other agencies to step in.
Post Columbine, Colorado established a very effective “safe to tell” anonymous reporting line that sent complaints not just back to the school but also to law enforcement. The history nationwide is that interventions from outside the education system are effective and needed.