- Joined
- Mar 13, 2010
- Messages
- 5,305
- Reaction score
- 16,992
When District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel charged the nine teens in late March, she said that Phoebe had endured a three-month campaign of bullying that was "common knowledge" among the students at the high school. She also said that "the investigation has revealed that certain faculty, staff, and administrators of the high school also were alerted to the harassment of Phoebe Prince before her death." Boisselle and Superintendent Gus Sayer have responded with what looks from the outside like a completely tone-deaf series of scoffs and denials. "Did they go interview all 700 kids at the school and found out that more than 300 knew about it? Isn't that the only way you could tell that they factually knew about it?" Boisselle asked in the Boston Herald. In print interviews and on CNN, Sayer has stuck to the oddly unapologetic line that the high school did all it could for Phoebe. Administrators and teachers just didn't really know or understand what was going on. "The kids have a way of communicating with each other without us knowing about it,'' he said. "They really have their own world."
This is meant as a defense, rather than an admission of lameness, even though after a suicide you'd think that the school would do some soul searching about why administrators, teachers, and guidance counselors didn't fully comprehend what was happening to a vulnerable student. This professed ignorance is also factually at odds with the account of Phoebe's mother, who has said she asked the school in November whether kids were threatening her daughter and then went back to talk to school officials about Phoebe in the first week of January. Sayer's claim also doesn't line up with the accounts of students who I've talked to. They say they saw Phoebe standing outside a classroom in tears and heard her crying in the nurse's office the day she died, as some students also told the New York Times.
Luke Gelinas, a parent who has called for the resignation of Sayer and Principal Dan Smith, told me he met with Sayer last Friday morning. "I told him I'd heard from Darby O'Brien, the spokesman for the Prince family, that during the intake process in September, when Phoebe was brought to the school, it was made known to them that she was prone to bullying and that she should have regular counseling and checkups to make sure she's OK. Sayer confirmed that for me. But no counselors reached out to her until three months later." This hasn't been reported elsewhere, so I called Sayer's office to check on it. I haven't heard back.
http://www.slate.com/id/2249867/
This is meant as a defense, rather than an admission of lameness, even though after a suicide you'd think that the school would do some soul searching about why administrators, teachers, and guidance counselors didn't fully comprehend what was happening to a vulnerable student. This professed ignorance is also factually at odds with the account of Phoebe's mother, who has said she asked the school in November whether kids were threatening her daughter and then went back to talk to school officials about Phoebe in the first week of January. Sayer's claim also doesn't line up with the accounts of students who I've talked to. They say they saw Phoebe standing outside a classroom in tears and heard her crying in the nurse's office the day she died, as some students also told the New York Times.
Luke Gelinas, a parent who has called for the resignation of Sayer and Principal Dan Smith, told me he met with Sayer last Friday morning. "I told him I'd heard from Darby O'Brien, the spokesman for the Prince family, that during the intake process in September, when Phoebe was brought to the school, it was made known to them that she was prone to bullying and that she should have regular counseling and checkups to make sure she's OK. Sayer confirmed that for me. But no counselors reached out to her until three months later." This hasn't been reported elsewhere, so I called Sayer's office to check on it. I haven't heard back.
http://www.slate.com/id/2249867/
