Last week, at Bedford High School in New Hampshire, boys in the 9th and 10th grades were sending inappropriate pictures of women (from their school) around and then grading them. So what would administrations in the North Clackamas School District (NCSD) do if that were to occur here?
The NCSD’s policy is that you can’t record others (whether that’s staff or students) within the school without their permission. Brita Johnson, the Dean of Students at Rex Putnam High School, says that students often record or take photos of others within the school. And that it’s a hard situation to control, due to the heavily evolved use of technology amongst kids. Though it’s a hard problem to solve. “It’s not only violating the phone, technology piece, but it’s harassment”. Most of the time it’s not, so it’s treated with a warning, and an explanation of how much it truly affects these kids who don’t want a picture taken of them, and they don’t want it to be posted somewhere. If it were to occur again, the consequences could be a phone call home, to an in-school suspension. If one’s behavior hasn’t changed after working on it over and over, it results in a moving school program, where the student is put into a spot at a different school.” Rex Putnam rarely gives out-of-school suspension unless it’s “for fights and drug/alcohol situations”. She also says that “Once in high school there’s no excuse for doing something like that”, and it’s a policy often brought up and required within the middle schools.
After the incident at Bedford High School, the boys were suspended, leading the girls who were harassed to create a petition to get the boys expelled. Within Rex Putnam, a situation like this has not yet occurred, and if it were to happen, Johnson said, “I would probably get someone else to deal with it because of my lack of experience. I don’t want to take over things I don’t know how to deal with, but I would listen.” She also said that a student can always start a petition as long as it’s not interrupting the learning environment. If a petition were to be started and “if it’s brought to the school board, it’s good because they have to listen, and anyone can go to the school board”.
Brendan Duhrkoop, a Senior at Rex Putnam High School, said he probably wouldn’t confront the person taking photos if this were to happen to him. But, he added that he would be upset. However, he admits he’s a male and not a female so his outlook could be very much different from that of a female. When asked if it were to happen to his girlfriend, he said he would take matters into his own hands & “find the people who did it at school and tell them to take it down, if it turned into something bigger I’d go to the school”. And quite frankly he thinks he would handle the situation better, and to a more important extent than the school would. Administrators think students are already learning the change in culture and policy regarding the use of cellphones with the hope that problems don’t occur in the NCSD schools.