The Vent Pipe

A disturbing report in the Washington Post today about a school administrator who was Duke-lacrossed all over again.

Let me provide a synopsis of the story: An administrator at a high school in Loudoun County heard reports of “sexting” at his high school.  He had specific names and incidents.  He did what he needed to do — investigated the reports, gathered evidence, reported to his superiors and worked through the appropriate channels of authority.  He thought that was it.  He left school that day for spring break.  When he returned, the real ordeal began:

When I returned to school two days after break ended, I confronted a new problem: The boy with the photo on his cell was now in trouble for having pulled a girl’s pants down in class (another teen phenomenon known as “flagging”). I informed his mother that I was suspending him, and in the discussion I also told her about the earlier incident. She was outraged that I hadn’t reported it to her at the time. She called me at home that night at 10 p.m. and again at 7 a.m. the next morning, agitated and demanding that the suspension be revoked and threatening to involve an attorney. I told her as calmly as I could that the suspension was for the deliberate act of pulling down the girl’s pants. A couple of days later, after an appeal hearing with the principal and me, she shouted at me, “I’ll see you in court!”

[...]

I wasn’t worried when a few days later, two sheriff’s investigators came to school. They said that they were investigating a parental complaint and asked me whether I knew anything about photos being sent around on cellphones. I told them about our investigation and volunteered to show them the one photo it had turned up. [He had confiscated the file from the student and stored it on his own cell-phone, unable to transfer it to his computer].

He wasn’t worried, but apparently he should have been:

Then, a full month later, in May, I was charged with “failure to report suspected child abuse.” I was stunned.

A deal was offered; if the administrator would resign, the charges would be dropped.  He refused.  The school system reinstated him.  But that’s not the end of the story:

Aug. 20 was the first day for teachers to report back to school. An hour into the morning, the school’s police officer called me out of a meeting. In my office, he told me that he had to arrest me.

For the next 8 months, the administrator was faced with the charges that he had, in essence, failed in his job to protect students because he did not report “suspected child abuse.” Finally, in March, after his career had been destroyed, his relationships had faced severe scrutiny and, in short, his life had been entirely disassembled, he was cleared of all charges:

Although I felt pressure along the way to cave and accept a deal, I absolutely refused to do it. My resolve only strengthened after the prosecutor’s office upped the ante with two additional misdemeanor charges.

On March 31, [2009] I was on the road with my wife when my lawyer called. I pulled, appropriately enough, into a church parking lot to hear the news: A judge had dismissed all the charges. All I could think was, “Hallelujah!”

Read the whole article.  It’s WAPO, so you’ll need to sign into your free account.

Ting-yi Oei has since returned to work, as far as I can tell, but the question remains: will his life ever be the same? I doubt it.

I can only imagine the nightmare of facing such an awful, terrifying ordeal.

Sexting and other forms of cyber-bullying are an increasingly difficult issues for educators to face. In my own, very short, experience, it seems to me that students (administrators and prosecutorial misconduct aside) do not understand the severity of cyberbullying, including the dispicable and degrading practice of “sexting.” They have no understanding that cyberbullying, sexting and other forms of electronic misconduct can have consequences for them at the school level.  They have no comprehension of the fact that this behavior can (and has–just Google it to find a variety of stories on the topic) result in severe depression, anti-social behavior and even suicide from victims.  They can’t grapple with the legal actions that can be taken against them for their behavior.  And lastly they don’t seem to realize that, as was the case with Assistant Principal Ting-yi Oei, often times innocent, non-suspecting victims can have their lives turned to shambles by such thoughtless behavior.

With all this talk about torture “shocking the conscience,” perhaps our administrators should examine the “shocking” nature of the behavior of our students.  Shocking indeed.