What Comes Around?

I have written here before about the case of Avery Doninger, the CT high school student who got in trouble for calling her school administration "douche bags" in her blog. It is a complex tale and I invite you to look at earlier entries as I wrote and reacted to the story as it unfolded in the news media.

The latest chapter appeared in today's Hartford Courant. The article, as written, has a jumbled flow, presumably edited to present a headline and focus on details that grab the most attention. As I read it, the story goes like this. There is a different Superintendent in place than the one that was there last spring when the incident happened. In the last year the case has moved through the court system. Currently it is at a stage where a recent ruling said that the school did have the right to punish the student and we await the next round.

As that recent ruling hit, a Wisconson man, Mike Morris, who had been following the story in the news, emailed staff at the school saying that the school's reaction to Avery constituted evidence that she had been right about them all along. The principal of the school took it upon herself to email back to the guy, saying in her email in part that Avery had been warned about her language in the past. Morris forwarded the reply to Avery's mother, who used a Freedom of Information request to get the school to give her the orginal email and original reply.

The story is a bit unclear in the next details but the upshot and headline is that the current superintendent suspended the principal without pay for two days for an "uncharacteristic lapse in judgement" for releasing information about a student in violation of state law and school policy, because her reply email revealed information about Avery. Avery's mother for her part obtained a complete set of her daughter's school records which predictably have no mention of any disciplinary actions, or comments about difficulty with inappropriate language.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Does it sound like it was a comedy of errors that resulted in a self satisfying "gotcha" by the Doninger family? A parting shot for Avery who was a junior when this started and will be ending her high school career in a couple of days?

One of the things that I learned in following the story in the local news over the year was that the devil was in the details. The mainstream media (or what constitute mainstream media in CT) presented the story in a way that highlighted the details to keep the reader flipping the page. It was not until I read a longer piece by Larry Bloom where you got to see a fuller, richer picture of the give and take of what went on in the days last spring when Avery got mad about the cancelation of the Jamfest concert. I think that today's article is about the same. An above the fold sidebar headline, and a focus on the "suspended Principal", burries the actions and context of the now very media savy family.

I said before that the actions of the school administration were designed to provide a lesson about responsibity and accountabilty of action. The incident continues to be an ultimate "teachable moment" for everyone involved.