BEAT THE PRESS!
To paraphrase an old saying, “if ignorance is bliss, some people in Warren Township must be the happiest on the planet.” I write that in response to the many of the comments made at Tuesday night’s PTA meeting over a reported sex scandal at Raymond Park Middle School.
As has been already reported, the District found out two students engaged in sexual activity in an Industrial Arts class and later expelled them. The incident occurred in December 2006 but the school didn’t find out about it until January. Once it made the news the story took on a life of its own and made national headlines. I did a Google search shortly after the story broke and found more than a hundred entries. One even reached Australia.
The administration, as well as many parents, took the tone that this negative publicity was the fault of the media. Us in the media (yours truly and Sandra Chapman at WTHR-TV to be specific) were the ones truly to blame. The way some people at the meeting spoke, had it not been for the media, none of this would have ever have happened. I respectfully disagree.
The media did not force the children to engage in sex. The media did not contradict itself by offering alternate stories of how the two kids were caught. In one version, the teacher discovered the students. In a later version, the a student who acted as a lookout told a teacher while serving detention. The media did not say “no comment.” In fact we went through painstaking efforts to make sure the children’s identities were protected. It was the school district dropped the ball on this one, plain and simple. As soon as they found out about this, they should have gotten together and mapped out a strategy and then went forward and told as much as they could have, keeping full consideration of the students’ privacy concerns. I understand these are not easy matters to discuss. No school district wants to be known as the one where students have sex behind a computer desk. But consider the alternative.
Beating up on the press solves nothing. Instead of taking ownership and blaming the press the school district and it supporters are not teaching children to take responsibility. They are teaching them to pass buck. You would think people who are supposed to be in education would be smarter than this.
If the Warren Township School District learned anything from this, I would hope they learned two things. First, get in front of issues instead of letting the issues get in front of you. Second, you should never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel or has a broadcast tower because they will always get the last word.
