Revised & strengthened. I know: there are other headlines for the hazing or bullying or whatever the hell happened aboard that freshman football team bus from Glacier High School. I considered Bus driver emulates piano player at bawdy house; and Glacier High’s animal bus; and School district gropes for truth about rowdy bus ride. Any would have worked, but if the news reports in the InterLake are true, the creeps crept while the coaches slept.
According to the Flathead Beacon:
Six freshmen students have been kicked off the team and suspended from school, one of the program’s coaches has resigned and the school district has found itself with a second incident involving a football team in as many years.
And according to an InterLake story yesterday, the school district’s investigation is complete, but the police department’s investigation is not. Meanwhile the school district is not happy that parents are speaking out and that the incident made the newspapers (where there are dozens of online comments, some interesting).
That’s no surprise, and not really big news. School administrators are never happy about adverse publicity. It’s hard to explain on their résumés, and it never helps during a levy election. Educators love reading Frosh footballers thrash arch rivals headlines. But reading Rogue frosh jocks accused of attempting to perform nonconsensual digital prostate exams on teammates in the morning newspaper might cause any educator to involuntarily expel his expresso.
The next question, of course, is whether the school district’s board of trustees will investigate the coaches who knew nothing because they were in dreamland at only 2100, and the bus driver who reportedly thought something was amiss but decided to keep on rolling instead of stopping the bus, turning on the lights, and eyeballing the students instead of the yellow stripe in the road.
If necessary, these people can be replaced — as can Glacier High’s athletic director and principal. One incident might be the result of special circumstances. Two incidents, and in successive years, suggest that Glacier High's administrators are not up to the job and should be fired. The role model for Superintendent Schottle and the trustees is former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who fired the Secretary of the Army over problems at Walter Reed, and the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Forces's top general after six nuclear bombs were inadvertently flown from North Dakota to Louisiana.
Bullying is a serious problem, especially so in situations in which adult supervision is expected and required, adult supervisors are present, and it happens anyway. It’s not acceptable for school administrators to react to it by saying in effect, “Oh, dear, it happened again. That’s not what we want. We try and we’ll keep trying. But it’s such a big problem and it’s so hard to stop. Oh, well, boys will be boys.” If it were up to me, I’d fire Glacier’s administrators — all of them — the athletic director, and all of the coaches. Clearly, they’re not doing the job (and in this situation trying is not good enough).
And I wouldn’t stop there.
I’d start identifying and calling out the parents who think bullying is a admirable manifestation of manhood, the fathers (and some mothers) who teach their sons that real men are tough, that might makes right, that a supreme being anoints the strong and directs them, in the service of social Darwinism, to push around and bloody-up those who are weaker.
And the odds that any of this will happen? Probably lower than the odds of winning that perfect attendance car.