More nonsense in the MMS hallways
Apr 2, 2015 at 6:29pm Edited
I think it's less public shaming and more public expressing of horror and disbelief. And no, sorry, you don't get a honeymoon period on this kind of stuff.
ctrzaska said:
I think it's less public shaming and more public expressing of horror and disbelief. And no, sorry, you don't get a honeymoon period on this kind of stuff.
I think it becomes public shaming when the same people have to keep expressing their outrage/horror/disbelief etc. etc. 50 times in the same thread.
Apr 3, 2015 at 12:56am Edited
sprout said:
I'm going to suggest:
==== TIME OUT on the student/parent/administration bashing =====
While I know emotions are running high (and @cleg, I admire your restraint), perhaps the pile-on of public shaming/reprimands can be reeled in a bit.
These are our neighbors. Even the new MMS Principal.
(After the middle school meeting I believe I heard the new MMS Principal telling someone that he lives in Maplewood, and his kids (who were also at that meeting) attend school in SOMSD.
This is likely to be the new Principal's trial-by-fire. Perhaps we can wait and see how the dust settles before piling on with additional critiques.
I'm hoping that this ends up being a learning experience for students, parents, and school administration, which leads to improvements, and good preparation for the future.
Girls are being molested in the hallways and you want a "time out" or "let the dust settle"?? Your comments of acceptance, or "wait and see" nauseate me. That is part and parcel of why this is still going on. I don't care if they are neighbors-no excuses- you don't touch young women no matter WHAT. I would go as far to say the school should shut down until they resolve this matter. THAT is how important it is to STOP sexual abuse/harassment.
Apr 3, 2015 at 1:02am Edited
It sounds to me like the school is handling the situation appropriately. Again, I think we should all commend @Cleg for his handling of the situation with a focus on improving behavior and less on punitive options. The suggestion that the school be closed is rather over the top.
I would be willing to bet that there are some discussions going on with in the administration that are none too pleasant for the Principal of MMS.
And since the police are now involved, I'm guessing that grabbing girls isn't quite so much fun for the boys any more.
I would be willing to bet that there are some discussions going on with in the administration that are none too pleasant for the Principal of MMS.
And since the police are now involved, I'm guessing that grabbing girls isn't quite so much fun for the boys any more.
MMS kids do a lot of things that most people would never believe them capable of doing. I have had to chase them out of the restrooms at the train station several times, for sexually explicit behavior. There's the bridge at the end of the park, where Baker meets Dunell rd, they go under there also. This is not surprising to me at all, from the conversations I have over heard from the ones who used to hang out at the train station after school. But if they continue without being reprimanded I feel it will end up with some girl being raped. It's time to get the police involved I think, before it becomes more serious.
There are different parts to this problem--individual cases like cleg's child--and the larger context, pattern of behavior, culture, what have you.
I have heard from older kids that this has been happening a long time. Many never told parents. Some thought it was "normal" and that they had to shrug it off. Sometimes it was among friends, sometimes by unknown kids. They need education as much as the perpetrators in order to change the culture.
It is worth pointing out that there are ongoing character education activities at the school (e.g. week of respect in October, weekly messages since January)
And the new discipline policy released in February, which unequivocally stated:
-------
Keep Your Hands to Yourself
It is NOT permitted to put your hands on someone else at any time.
-----
Along with a policy of keeping to the right in hallway traffic, to minimize "accidental" contact.
This is not just about a couple of bad eggs, or removing problem students. This is, and has been widespread, and longstanding, and, um, not exactly confined to MMS or middle school culture.
Mr. Adams may not have solved it, but he does seem to be taking it seriously.
I have heard from older kids that this has been happening a long time. Many never told parents. Some thought it was "normal" and that they had to shrug it off. Sometimes it was among friends, sometimes by unknown kids. They need education as much as the perpetrators in order to change the culture.
It is worth pointing out that there are ongoing character education activities at the school (e.g. week of respect in October, weekly messages since January)
And the new discipline policy released in February, which unequivocally stated:
-------
Keep Your Hands to Yourself
It is NOT permitted to put your hands on someone else at any time.
-----
Along with a policy of keeping to the right in hallway traffic, to minimize "accidental" contact.
This is not just about a couple of bad eggs, or removing problem students. This is, and has been widespread, and longstanding, and, um, not exactly confined to MMS or middle school culture.
Mr. Adams may not have solved it, but he does seem to be taking it seriously.
I agree that Mr. Adams has proactively confronted these situations far more than the previous administration. He should be given credit for his words and actions.
In our particular situation, changes that helped stop the behavior were administered by the end of the day that we met with the administration.
In our particular situation, changes that helped stop the behavior were administered by the end of the day that we met with the administration.
Apr 3, 2015 at 2:31am Edited
The discipline plan is not being consistently enforced according my 7th grader.
mjh said:
ctrzaska said:
I think it's less public shaming and more public expressing of horror and disbelief. And no, sorry, you don't get a honeymoon period on this kind of stuff.
I think it becomes public shaming when the same people have to keep expressing their outrage/horror/disbelief etc. etc. 50 times in the same thread.
Sounds to me like the greatest shaming with consequences was of the OP's daughter, who seems to be getting a little taste of what happens when you report assaults agains your person, and got it THE VERY NEXT DAY.
The kids know how to dispense their corrective behavior, it seems- immediately, with vigor- for maximum impact. In a public school! This would be outrageous if it happened in a prison yard.
Public airing of deadly serious concerns appears to be only reason something was done about serial instances of criminal sexual contact and harassment. Read the last post by the OP. She had push her way free from a mob that knew she had complained, knew nothing happened, and reasonably assumed nothing would happen....except then it did.
Put me on the list of those who don't want to give the nice guy some time to get a handle on daily assaults before checking in to see how it's going. Put me on the list of people who were outraged and who are becoming more so reading about a child being assaulted for raising her voice and is for keeping the pressure on those who should be acting, daily, to stop it.
The ONLY acceptable response is a firm reaction to each and every assault that occurs, with an emphasis on what's being done to eliminate assaults intimidation tactics geared toward silencing women with violence.
I'm sure he may be a neighbor but so are the people assaulting girls.
Give shaming a chance.
No point to shaming at this point. The people being shamed are now taking action. The perpetrators aren't being shamed. They need to stop or be expelled. Involving the police is a good first step. What additional useful steps would you recommend at this point.
@sarahzm, I think you're making an effort to find fault in what I say. Either that or I am not expressing myself well. I think cleg and family are handling this well. Differences in opinion between you and me are smaller than you might think.
tjohn said:
No point to shaming at this point. The people being shamed are now taking action. The perpetrators aren't being shamed. They need to stop or be expelled. Involving the police is a good first step. What additional useful steps would you recommend at this point.
1) an investigation into how prior complaints were handled, with an emphasis on whether or not the MOU linked earlier was violated and by whom. If the MOU is found to have not applied to a circumstance, why.
2) Re- training of school personnel to remind them of their responsibility to report criminal sexual crimes immediately. Note that, again, nobody saw anything- I'm speaking specifically of staff. The young lady had to go make a complaint herself. This has been a common theme for all those discussing their experiences on this site. Either supervision sucks or they're not reporting what they see.
There is no wiggle there, it's one or the other. Let's find out which.
3) A report to the board of complaints made and actions taken. Every complaint should be recorded, and outcomes shared.
That's for starters. The issue, TJ, is that once you turn away, those with an interest in not reporting, for whatever reason, will go back to doing what they're doing. It appears (and let's have an inquiry to see if appearances are what they seem) that there is a concerted effort to suppress these complaints. If that's the case, any action taken this week is window dressing and people will go back to doing what they always did- and the girls will still be there.
Yes, I keep coming back because I am incredulous, in disbelief that some here don't seem to be able to understand the gravity of what has been allowed to occur to young women in our middle school.
I cant describe my outrage that girls were being abused ( yes this is abuse) and assaulted and their complaints went unanswered.
Sexual Assault is not about sex. It is about power and cruelty and intimidation. Sexual assault is not just rape.
The quick response to the events cleg described shows how every single complaint and event should have been handled. Why it took three years and outrage on a public board to warrant effective action is something that should be investigated by the Superintendent, the school board and perhaps even higher authorities. Allowing 12, 13 and 14 year old girls to be subjected to this on a ongoing basis in the halls of our public schools without responding appropriately seems to me to be criminal negligence.
This is not just an inconvenience to the girls who were victimized. These girls were victims of criminal behavior. This is much more serious than raging hormones or boys will be boys.
Try if you can, to put yourself in the shoes of the victims. Imagine at your job now, going to work every day and every time you walked in the halls you knew you might be accosted by co-workers grabbing your genitals and telling you they wanted to get into your a**. Imagine you told the people in charge, and nothing was done. There was nothing you could do but endure it every day. Imagine you are not an adult, but are a 12, 13 or14 year old adolescent.
Some young women are very confident and self assured. But for every girl like cleg's daughter who can handle herself I guarantee, there are others who dreaded going to school, dreaded going into those hallways, wondered what was wrong with them because they were being targeted.
What if there were a pack of students hounding other students in the halls touching them inappropriately saying ni****, ni****, ni****, or fag***, fag***. Suppose this had gone on for years and multiple complaints by parents went unanswered. Would anyone say start small, take a time out, stop the public shaming.
I know I keep repeating myself, but there seem to be people here who do not understand how egregious this behavior really is, and the very serious harm that could result because it was tolerated for so long.
I cant describe my outrage that girls were being abused ( yes this is abuse) and assaulted and their complaints went unanswered.
Sexual Assault is not about sex. It is about power and cruelty and intimidation. Sexual assault is not just rape.
The quick response to the events cleg described shows how every single complaint and event should have been handled. Why it took three years and outrage on a public board to warrant effective action is something that should be investigated by the Superintendent, the school board and perhaps even higher authorities. Allowing 12, 13 and 14 year old girls to be subjected to this on a ongoing basis in the halls of our public schools without responding appropriately seems to me to be criminal negligence.
This is not just an inconvenience to the girls who were victimized. These girls were victims of criminal behavior. This is much more serious than raging hormones or boys will be boys.
Try if you can, to put yourself in the shoes of the victims. Imagine at your job now, going to work every day and every time you walked in the halls you knew you might be accosted by co-workers grabbing your genitals and telling you they wanted to get into your a**. Imagine you told the people in charge, and nothing was done. There was nothing you could do but endure it every day. Imagine you are not an adult, but are a 12, 13 or14 year old adolescent.
Some young women are very confident and self assured. But for every girl like cleg's daughter who can handle herself I guarantee, there are others who dreaded going to school, dreaded going into those hallways, wondered what was wrong with them because they were being targeted.
What if there were a pack of students hounding other students in the halls touching them inappropriately saying ni****, ni****, ni****, or fag***, fag***. Suppose this had gone on for years and multiple complaints by parents went unanswered. Would anyone say start small, take a time out, stop the public shaming.
I know I keep repeating myself, but there seem to be people here who do not understand how egregious this behavior really is, and the very serious harm that could result because it was tolerated for so long.
It's also about the idea that girls, and their safety and autonomy, don't really matter enough. Awful that they are getting this message so young.
calliope said:
These are middle schoolers, and as smart and savvy as they may be, they are hardly equipped to determine how to handle this matter. There are many wise and helpful suggestions here, but none of those suggest self-help on the part of the victims. Please consider contacting an attorney,immediately. This is not a petty annoyance, it is a crime. The school is charged with a mandate to provide a safe atmosphere in which to learn. They are not living up to that mandate.
+1
sarahzm said:
What if there were a pack of students hounding other students in the halls touching them inappropriately saying ni****, ni****, ni****, or fag***, fag***. Suppose this had gone on for years and multiple complaints by parents went unanswered. Would anyone say start small, take a time out, stop the shaming?.
+1
Jackson_Fusion said:
tjohn said:
No point to shaming at this point. The people being shamed are now taking action. The perpetrators aren't being shamed. They need to stop or be expelled. Involving the police is a good first step. What additional useful steps would you recommend at this point.
1) an investigation into how prior complaints were handled, with an emphasis on whether or not the MOU linked earlier was violated and by whom. If the MOU is found to have not applied to a circumstance, why.
2) Re- training of school personnel to remind them of their responsibility to report criminal sexual crimes immediately. Note that, again, nobody saw anything- I'm speaking specifically of staff. The young lady had to go make a complaint herself. This has been a common theme for all those discussing their experiences on this site. Either supervision sucks or they're not reporting what they see.
There is no wiggle there, it's one or the other. Let's find out which.
3) A report to the board of complaints made and actions taken. Every complaint should be recorded, and outcomes shared.
That's for starters. The issue, TJ, is that once you turn away, those with an interest in not reporting, for whatever reason, will go back to doing what they're doing. It appears (and let's have an inquiry to see if appearances are what they seem) that there is a concerted effort to suppress these complaints. If that's the case, any action taken this week is window dressing and people will go back to doing what they always did- and the girls will still be there.
Thank you. This is not shaming. These are specific actions.
Apr 3, 2015 at 4:05am Edited
Jackson_Fusion said:
3) A report to the board of complaints made and actions taken. Every complaint should be recorded, and outcomes shared.
There is already a HIB (harassment, intimidation, bullying) section on the agenda of every board meeting. You can see the affirmations of the investigations listed in the minutes, but it's likely there are privacy laws around these reports preventing 'sharing' with the public.
Yes and specific steps are where we need to get to. But don't you see that no steps are even considered until enough people stand up and very firmly say, No more! Change only happens in cases of abuse of power when public outrage reaches a tipping point. Hopefully we are reaching that point and can now participate in making sure this behavior stops.
orzabelle said:
It's also about the idea that girls, and their safety and autonomy, don't really matter enough. Awful that they are getting this message so young.
Let me just say that the situation discussed by the op was not exclusive to just girls at MMS in the past, in our experience.
I don't think middle schoolers read MOL. I think parents relay stories that they've read on MOL to their children.
If our boys were harassed/assaulted/bullied in school and we went through all the proper channels and nothing was resolved, e.g., no punishments for the offenders, no suspensions, no apologies, no parent to parent meetings, then Mr. Kibbegirl and I would go to the parents. At that point, you have nothing to lose and if it worsens after that, we'd get the police involved and ask around to lawyer friends about restraining orders. To be touched sexually or verbally assaulted in school is UNACCEPTABLE! I'm pissed just reading this thread.
Some schools, like colleges/universities, DO NOT take these reports seriously even though they are mandated to do so. Believe it or not, a large part of our society operates under "boys will be boys" and will ask what was the girl wearing or what did she say to provoke the behavior. Hateful.
If our boys were harassed/assaulted/bullied in school and we went through all the proper channels and nothing was resolved, e.g., no punishments for the offenders, no suspensions, no apologies, no parent to parent meetings, then Mr. Kibbegirl and I would go to the parents. At that point, you have nothing to lose and if it worsens after that, we'd get the police involved and ask around to lawyer friends about restraining orders. To be touched sexually or verbally assaulted in school is UNACCEPTABLE! I'm pissed just reading this thread.
Some schools, like colleges/universities, DO NOT take these reports seriously even though they are mandated to do so. Believe it or not, a large part of our society operates under "boys will be boys" and will ask what was the girl wearing or what did she say to provoke the behavior. Hateful.
Apr 3, 2015 at 4:09am Edited
sprout said:
Jackson_Fusion said:
3) A report to the board of complaints made and actions taken. Every complaint should be recorded, and outcomes shared.
There is already a HIB (harassment, intimidation, bullying) section on the agenda of every board meeting. You can see the affirmations of the investigations listed in the minutes, but it's likely there are confidentiality rules around these reports preventing 'sharing' with the public.
In our experience (from about 2 years ago at MMS) not every complaint of this nature (in our case, most complaints) was treated as HIB. Most often, there was no action or if there was action it was verbal action. Nothing written.
Rivoli said:
sarahzm said:
What if there were a pack of students hounding other students in the halls touching them inappropriately saying ni****, ni****, ni****, or fag***, fag***. Suppose this had gone on for years and multiple complaints by parents went unanswered. Would anyone say start small, take a time out, stop the shaming?.
+1
Agreed...I'm appalled that so many of my neighbors seem ready to soft-pedal aggression against young women. Once again, sexist aggression seems to get a pass that anti-gay or racist behavior would not.
I'm saddened to realize that we are still living in an era where response to an issue like this has to start with basic consciousness raising for people (perhaps including school leadership) who don't really seem to understand the gravity of the problem.
So yes, if the school administration has been sitting behind its words of policy, hoping that the situation would right itself without too much noise or punishment, then some public consciousness raising (I wouldn't call what has happened here shaming) is not out of line, in my opinion.
I don't have children in the MMS community, but what I hear here sounds unacceptable. When I had a child at SOMS who was being teased in the halls (based on disability, rather than sexuality), I made a complaint to the administration, and the otherwise nice young men who didn't realize how much they were hurting her were in administrative offices within a couple of days, to help solve the situation. It wasn't my job to start a parents group, or call the parents of the offenders, or make my child dress or behave differently -- the administration knew mild bullying when it was presented to them, and took action to manage it.
To those of you who worry about coming down too hard on young men, who might be damaged by punishment, just remember that young women are also harmed when subjected to an environment of casual abuse and adults who are too slow to care and take action to defend them.
Apr 3, 2015 at 4:17am Edited
dg64 said:
In our experience (from about 2 years ago at MMS) not every complaint of this nature (in our case, most complaints) was treated as HIB. Most often, there was no action or if there was action it was verbal action. Nothing written.
Here are the NJ DOE's recommendations of how to proceed:
http://www.state.nj.us/education/students/safety/behavior/hib/hibassistance.shtml
sprout said:
dg64 said:
In our experience (from about 2 years ago at MMS) not every complaint of this nature (in our case, most complaints) was treated as HIB. Most often, there was no action or if there was action it was verbal action. Nothing written.
Here are the NJ DOE's recommendations of how to proceed:
http://www.state.nj.us/education/students/safety/behavior/hib/hibassistance.shtml
Yeah, sure. There are processes to escalate your complaints. The issue at MMS for a while has/had been that unless the words bullying were invoked, no one in the admin made a proactive attempt to start a HIB investigation. So, if a parent/child was not aware of what constituted as HIB they were left high and dry.
Apr 3, 2015 at 4:36am Edited
Understood.
But unless there is new information or guidance to provide, this thread has likely fulfilled its potential for informing and driving action.
But unless there is new information or guidance to provide, this thread has likely fulfilled its potential for informing and driving action.
The escalation processes are exactly the processes needed when the school and district ignores an HIB complaint. Specific timelines are given. Besides documenting escalation within the education system, through county and the commissioner of education alternate options are given such as filing a civil rights complaint, filing a police report and filing a complaint with superior court.dg64 said:
sprout said:
dg64 said:
In our experience (from about 2 years ago at MMS) not every complaint of this nature (in our case, most complaints) was treated as HIB. Most often, there was no action or if there was action it was verbal action. Nothing written.
Here are the NJ DOE's recommendations of how to proceed:
http://www.state.nj.us/education/students/safety/behavior/hib/hibassistance.shtml
Yeah, sure. There are processes to escalate your complaints. The issue at MMS for a while has/had been that unless the words bullying were invoked, no one in the admin made a proactive attempt to start a HIB investigation. So, if a parent/child was not aware of what constituted as HIB they were left high and dry.
Its a pretty good document listing responsibilities, timelines and options.
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==== TIME OUT on the student/parent/administration bashing =====
While I know emotions are running high (and @cleg, I admire your restraint), perhaps the pile-on of public shaming/reprimands can be reeled in a bit.
These are our neighbors. Even the new MMS Principal.
(After the middle school meeting I believe I heard the new MMS Principal telling someone that he lives in Maplewood, and his kids (who were also at that meeting) attend school in SOMSD.
This is likely to be the new Principal's trial-by-fire. Perhaps we can wait and see how the dust settles before piling on with additional critiques.
I'm hoping that this ends up being a learning experience for students, parents, and school administration, which leads to improvements, and good preparation for the future.