Some of us may have read about this at the time, but this is a far more detailed account with interviews of students and adults on all sides and some surprising reflections from those affects years later.
(UPDATED with free gift link)
Paywalled. What is the gist of the story?
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Weird. I used a gift link since I’m a paying subscriber. I’ve updated with a new link.
Incident started ~7 years ago when a boy and some friends started a separate private Instagram account from their main ones for a dozen or so of them to share offensive memes, some of them clearly racists and hateful (making light of lynchings for example) and in a some cases specifically referencing other students at the school who were black women. Others found out and got picks of the content and it quickly blew up in the community and broader media. The school suspended the students who were members of the group but hadn’t actively posted and never let the main posters return. By the time the subscribers returned from suspension, there was mass student rallies against them to the point that they became trapped in the school because they couldn’t safely leave and when the school tried to sneak them out the back the crowd found out and physically assaulted some of the students and their parents. The article had interviews with many of the women victimized by the posts and both the posters and subscribers and their feelings years later after the last of the resulting lawsuits has run its course (after the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal).
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Thanks for the recap. Appreciate it.
Not a word about charging the perpetrators of the violence criminally? SMH
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I had read it this morning and instantly thought of a friend’s son, a rising senior - and the parents’ frequently voiced worries/hopes that he and his peers, in all their teenage stupidity, multi-player games, and attempts to out-shock/jock each other, don’t cross a line that will follow them forever.
It was one thing to knowingly test/cross the boundary of inappropriateness when it was confined to in-person banter that vanished into thin air that same night, but with social media, everything becomes a matter of permanent record…
I do appreciate the writer’s investigation not just into the actions and reactions themselves, but also how circumstances at the school’s attempt to mediate, resulted in lines to actually become hardened.
All along I kept thinking: “Yup, I definitely can see that happen” (on all three sides), while counting my blessings that we somehow managed to steer clear of anything similar.
It reinforces something we need to keep impressing on our kids:
Even if it’s “just stupid” to you, it genuinely can still hurt others.
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