Kids being kids?

sonoratoo
Sun, 16 Sep 2012 12:11:40 +0000

Since this episode happened last year, I think it can safely be said that it was not intended to give the new headmaster gray hairs as Barbara Chase was still head-of-school.

I think it is a fact that people (not just teens) are capable of poor judgement and error so something like this could happen anywhere. The real question (as someone said earlier) is how was it handled?

In the case of Andover, the school handled it swiftly. Meetings were held immediately with students to discuss community values and condemn these hurtful actions. A note was sent home to parents presumably to inform them but I suspect also to precipitate a conversation about it between each student and their parents. And, as you can see from the article in the Phillipian, the students themselves were quick to condemn the actions of a few. The lists were allegedly posted by 1st year students so they were the youngest and newest members of the Andover community. I am guessing that given the way it was handled by the school, the perpetrators learned a quick lesson in tolerance and hopefully will not demonstrate such poor judgement in the future.

FWIW, things way worse happened at boarding schools in my day and the schools’ responses were usually non-existent to tepid. However, as observed with similar incidents at other boarding schools in the past few years the responses have been swift and strong (for example: the handling by Choate of the Facebook incident). So my answer is yes, kids will be kids. But my question is: will a school handle it well?