I am not a sensitive person. The big joke with my friends, family and students is that I have a heart of ice and stone. While this isn't really the case, it is 100% true that my inability to deal with strong emotions makes it difficult to know how to help my kids cover stories that are certain to incite the same emotions I try to avoid.
This is not a forum for me to try and psychoanalyze myself, but it does give a bit of context as to why the story my students have decided to follow for the next year gave me concern.
To make a long story short, a student at my school forged acceptances to Harvard and Stanford, claiming the two schools gave her a special dispensation to spend two years at one school and two years at the other. This was the story the student told her parents, students, church community, and members of the foreign press.
Two of my seniors came to see me one morning the week before the last week of school asking if I had heard about the scandal. They wanted to know what we, the student newspaper, should do.
I hadn't the foggiest idea.
I did know that they would need to get in touch with the student, with administrators, with admissions counselors - a slew of people. I told them I would support them not matter what they decided, and as they were getting ready to graduate, they decided not to do anything.
But this isn't a story that we could ignore, especially when the Washington Post picked it up.
I contacted my rising editors and we devised a plan: since the story was no longer news, we decided to publish an online editorial and then print an in-depth story about academic pressure in our first issue.
But you guys know this because apparently I posted about it at 2:30am, so I'll get to what's really important.
I wonder every day if the way I handed the situation initially was the right way to handle it. Should we have jumped on the story earlier? Should we have written a news story? Should we have attempted to contact the student? The administration?
This isn't really a post about something I've learned this week, but I can say with "ice and stone" certainty that I will take back the lessons and use them to help my kids as we try and help our school community overcome the cultural, social and academic pressures they face on a day-to-day basis.
Erinn - We're human, and when we're in the face of certain situations, sometimes we need time to process before we can make proper decisions, although journalism sometimes doesn't give us time.
ReplyDeleteOn May 12, we went into lockdown and a student took his own life with a gun. Through Twitter, we could figure out who it was, where it was and how he did it, but confirmation came from our local ABC affiliate's Twitter account rather than administration. He was a senior and I had seniors that period, including one of his best friends (who was also my sports editor). What was my role at that moment? Was I a newspaper adviser who should have mobilized my news staff? Or was I a teacher at the school who had a responsibility to keep my students as physically and emotionally safe as possible? I went with No. 2 and we didn't post a story until the next day, written by my managing editor, although I asked him to do it that night. In hindsight, perhaps I should have been tweeting about the situation, but I was just as emotionally wrought as my students. It was our second death of a senior in a month, and the fact it was a suicide on campus still haunts me.
Should you have jumped on the story? Yes. Is it the end of the world that you didn't? Not at all. But I really like that you are taking a different angle to the story (although is it academic pressure that made her do it or is mental health an issue? Was she looking for attention?) It's a fascinating story that merits the deeper look you're going to give it.
I don't think it's a matter of being sensitive or insensitive. It's a matter of being human.
Kris Urban
Corona del Sol High School
Tempe, Ariz.