Editor’s note: This commentary is by Brigid Scheffert, superintendent of schools for the Washington West Supervisory Union.
As the school year begins, administrators across Vermont will once again focus on student safety. Our Washington West Supervisory Union administrative team spent the better part of a day in August reviewing and revising the safety plans and protocols for all seven of our schools. However, this year my thoughts and concerns about keeping our students safe extend far beyond unwanted intruders. In particular, I have been dwelling on the use of social media. For years we have written policies and procedures about acceptable use, developed student contracts, and have tried to educate students about the dangers of the Internet. Parents do the same. Usually, the focus is one of stranger danger, falsehoods, and inappropriate sites.
I am really writing today to reach out to both our student body and parent community with a large warning about sexting. Actually, the topic is much larger than sexting in the way most of us define it. Sexting, the sending of naked pictures of oneself to others, usually friends, has taken on a whole new meaning with a huge set of unintended, harmful consequences that can, in just a push of a button, nearly destroy a young person’s future career and possibly life.
I am telling this story to our community at large in an effort to be proactive, to help spare other students, and to educate everyone about the realities in our own backyard.
The story goes like this. Last year, I became aware that a sizable number of Harwood Union High School students were involved in sexting on a pretty regular basis over the course of a two-year period. Through investigation by both school officials and law enforcement, it became clear that 20 or so female students had sent very graphic naked pictures of themselves to boyfriends. Now what happened next took an even more serious and dangerous turn. As many as 30 or so male students started sharing the pictures, trading them, collecting them like baseball cards, and offering to buy certain girls’ photos. I have no doubt that this whole story goes even deeper, but I can only write about what was actually uncovered.
Really good students, making really bad choices naively and impulsively, can find themselves with very serious felony charges. Even if convictions get avoided, college acceptances, scholarships and admission into military academies can go up in smoke, not to mention future employment opportunities.
Students were horrified. Many were completely stunned to find out that the photos existed because, of course, promises were made that they would be destroyed. Vermont has sexting legislation that somewhat differentiates in a legal way this kind of behavior when it is consensual among students of nearly the same age, and does not involve sharing the photos. But, when naked pictures of minors are possessed, distributed, and sold the law becomes very black and white. Really good students, making really bad choices naively and impulsively, can find themselves with very serious felony charges. Even if convictions get avoided, college acceptances, scholarships and admission into military academies can go up in smoke, not to mention future employment opportunities.
Our students are unaware of the magnitude of what can happen to them, and their lives, by engaging in these behaviors. I do not want to be sitting across another table with a devastated family, with a mother whose eyes are swollen shut from crying, and a student whose college and career plan has just been destroyed because of sexting, or other stupid, impulsive use of social media.
The Vermont State Police reported to me that they subpoenaed from Facebook approximately 2,000 pages of texting and sexting messages from Harwood Union students last year. I was shocked not only at what I saw, but how extensive the entire case was. I also learned that sexting and the other behaviors I mentioned above are rampant in high schools throughout Vermont. Last February, similar cases were reported in the media in Milton and St. Albans.
One deputy state’s attorney when speaking in general of today’s teens sharing nude or explicit photos, said it is so prevalent that the special investigative units throughout the state do not have the manpower to investigate everything that gets reported.
At the present time, I am told by law enforcement that the Harwood investigation is completed. Those students involved have been receiving supports throughout the year, including counseling. My understanding is that the HUHS case has been turned over to the Community Justice Center (CJC). We have worked collaboratively with our agency partners to take an educational and restorative justice approach in this matter, issuing school discipline where warranted, and avoiding criminal charges. As part of our agreement, the CJC will create an all-school assembly program on the dangers of sexting, along with law enforcement officials, who will present the factual information about the laws.
This is not just a Harwood problem. Parents and other adult role models, we need to open up dialog and keep on talking about the dangers and ramifications of these types of choices with our students. We need another approach, other than the court system. Clearly, it does truly take a community to raise a child.
