Teach Her Good
So, you run a high school and you think teen pregnancy and the spread of STIs is a serious problem. Well, if you’re Principal George Aulenbacher of George Washington High School in Charleston, West Virginia, you embrace a disgraced abstinence-only campaign and bring a nut-ball speaker in to make the kids feel shame for ever thinking about the pleasures of the flesh.
Then when one of your students pushes back against the slut shaming, what do you do? Threaten to destroy her future, that’s what!
From ThinkProgress:
Campbell refused to attend the assembly, which was funded by a conservative religious organization called “Believe in West Virginia” and advertised with fliers that proclaimed “God’s plan for sexual purity.” Instead, she filed a complaint with the ACLU and began to speak out about her objections to this type of school-sponsored event. Campbell called Stenzel’s presentation “slut shaming” and said that it made many students uncomfortable.
GW Principal George Aulenbacher, on the other hand, didn’t see anything wrong with hosting Stenzel. “The only way to guarantee safety is abstinence. Sometimes, that can be a touchy topic, but I was not offended by her,” he told the West Virginia Gazette last week.
But it didn’t end with a simple difference of opinion among Campbell and her principal. The high school senior alleges that Aulenbacher threatened to call Wellesley College, where Campbell has been accepted to study in the fall, after she spoke to the press about her objections to the assembly. According to Campbell, her principal said, “How would you feel if I called your college and told them what bad character you have and what a backstabber you are?” Campbell alleges that Aulenbacher continued to berate her in his office, eventually driving her to tears. “He threatened me and my future in order to put forth his own personal agenda and make teachers and students feel they cant speak up because of fear of retaliation,” she said of the incident.
If the recording found here really is the presentation that Pam Stenzel gave to the students, it’s damned near impossible not to side with the student (and, thankfully, Wellesly is siding with their prospective student).
Look, if you’ve got some prudish view on sex, I understand; we all have our hang-ups. But when you decide to act on these retrograde opinions by slut shaming and giving dangerous advice – especially when you’re charged with educating our youth – you’re verging on monster status.
Stories like this make me want put my head down on my desk, close my eyes, and hope that when I open them, I am a member of a profession that doesn’t embarrass itself in ways that run completely counter to our duties and obligations.Report
In a way, this makes me feel better.Report
I’m a bit curious how, if you have the chance to elaborate…Report
Fortunately, “I’m going to tell Wellesley that you can think for yourself and recognize BS when you come across it” is a pretty toothless threat.Report
My favorite part was the bit where the principal thought telling Wesley that the student was some kind of uppity feminist would be a threat.
It’s according to the student and unconfirmed, but it’s so space awesome I really hope it’s true.Report
Right? I got to the word Wellesley and thought OH THANK GOD. They’ll be proud of her there.Report
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the Wellesley admissions officer, upon reading the principal’s rant, would turn to the admissions officered the table next to her and say “Hey, Deborah- you have to read this. It may be the most beautiful recommendation letter we’ve ever received.”Report
“No, please, Brer Fox… don’t throw me in that bramble patch!”Report
All the jokes about how this will probably make Wellesley like her even more are both true and funny.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that receiving a threat like that from an adult in authority is still something that’s likely to cause anxiety in a high-school student.Report
Oh, yes, it’s a terrible story. I imagine given the choice between becoming a temporary icon and not having this ridiculous claptrap shoved down her throat in the first place, she’d go with number two.Report
Oh, of course.
I really wasn’t joking, for what it’s worth. My enthusiasm was more to do with a surfeit of empathy – relief that there’s only so long she will be treated in such a manner.Report
For all my assertive daughters and nieces (that I’m enormously proud of) this just makes me smile.Report
I’m sure it was a good source of entetainment for the entire admissions office, maybe even the entire faculty, for days.Report
I’m sure it was a good source of entetainment for the entire admissions office, maybe even the entire faculty, for days.Report
My thought as well. Doesn’t he know anything about this school? Wellesley is a fellow Seven Sister!*
*I’m from the Seven Sister that went co-ed in 1969.Report
well, from his perspective, it is “you’re a backstabber” not anything else…Report
No one is ever going to call this young woman an admissions office mistake.Report
And the clowns just keep coming.Report
If Campbell had the balls to to speak up and contact the ACLU why didn’t she have the balls to respond to Principal George Aulenbacher’s question with a response like this: “How would you like it if FIRE and the ACLU and I all sue your ass?”Report
I suspect l’esprit de l’escalier. I’ve had the same thing happen to me–I was hit by a car making an illegal turn while I was walking in a crosswalk, and was so shooken up by the experience that I almost didn’t call the cops (luckily, I came to my senses). But being in a stressful situation like that can make it hard to respond correctly right at the moment, especially for a high-schooler.Report
Seriously? Because she’s 18 and an angry grown man with a great deal of power and authority is yelling at her and threatening her.Report
Sure that’s a factor. But from the description this kid was a motivated passionate person voicing her concerns. She’d already contacted the ACLU AND had spoken to the local media. She’s got the stones for that but buckles under a confrontation?
She also could have said “I’m going to Wellesly, you figure out who the’ll support.”Report
She’s got the stones for that but buckles under a confrontation?
Geez, it’s like she’s human or something.Report
Do I really need to cite you some psych research?Report
She didn’t buckle. She just felt it. Having an emotional response to being bullied is not a weakness.Report
Lawsuit are a lot of work, a lot of publicity, and disruptive to one’s life to be involved in. It’s no surprise that one wouldn’t be her ideal way of dealing with this.Report
Of course, Wellesly is supporting their probable incoming student. Wellesly is a liberal and sensible campus. What did the principal expect? He sounds like he knows nothing beyond his front porch and that everyone agrees with him.Report
Yeah, when I got to the point that she was going to Wellesly and the principal was going to tell admissions officers about what happened, I thought “Wellesley? They’re like as not to offer this young lady a scholarship for doing this.”Report
“young lady, i’m going to call wellesley and DEMAND they give you more money and name some kind of scholarship fund after you!”Report
“And if that doesn’t work I’m going to call my good friend Bill O’Reilly to see if he’ll do a segment calling you a pinhead.”Report
Well, at least abstinence-only sex education works well. Oh, wait…Report
This is completely and utterly out of line. While I am not at all opposed to encouraging young people to wait until marriage, trying to damage someone’s educational prospects because they disagree with your policies is completely wrong. (However, given the views of most university campuses, this would be more likely to help the young woman gain admission than harm her.)Report
I’m with you like 95%. But, naturally, I’m going to pick a nit. I think it is waaaaaaay out of line for a public high school to encourage kids to wait until they’re married. Teach them that abstinence is the best protection against pregnancy and STIs? Sure, but if either of my daughters (when they’re much older) decide to have a sexual relationship outside of marriage, I’m not going to automatically assume they’re doing something they shouldn’t be.Report
I’d say to teach them the pros and cons, benefits and drawbacks of a variety of approaches to sexual relationships. Ground this in science… true abstinence reduces the risk of pregnancy or STDs to zero… condoms does this… birth control does that. Here are the risks of non-vaginal sex.
If there is good science regarding the emotional outcomes, I’d be okay with citing this, so long as the proper context is given. “Some studies show…”Report
Some studies show…
Eh…there’s a lot of wiggle room in there.Report
THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID! HA!!!
More seriously, what I mean is that if there are peer reviewed, scientifically sound studies that demonstrate that, say, couples that wait X years to have sex tend to have Y outcomes… you can tell that to students.
But you can’t tell them that a man in the sky will burn their eternal soul if they don’t slam their penis in a desk drawer every night.Report
Me neither, but I am hoping way after 14 or 15. Is there a substantive difference between my position and theirs? Or is it just a matter of different benchmarks? Seems that we all draw the line at “doing something they shouldn’t be” somewhere, no? So, in sex ed and government schools, where does that leave us? Ideally, I guess, with a mostly technical education not rooted in morality or psychology much at all. Is that possible? Would anybody be satisfied with that?Report
“Is there a substantive difference between my position and theirs?”
Their position that abstinence is good, or their position that women who don’t practice it are impure and hated by their mothers, or their position that you cannot have sex outside of marriage without contracting an STD?
Because I think a lot of the objections about their mandatory class dealt with things very, very different than abstinence.Report
Sorry, I meant “they” in the sense of what Katherine findsacceptable. Not the West Virginia thing, which is uunacceptable on a number of levels.Report
“Ideally, I guess, with a mostly technical education not rooted in morality or psychology much at all.”
This is what I was trying to get at with my comment. Morality would be hard, since I think the fact that there is so much disagreement about most areas of sexual morality is ultimately evidence that it is a deeply personal issue. But I do think you could explore the psychology and other related angles, provided you are backing up your teachings in sound science. For instance, if teenage sex is correlated with, say, depression, I think you can explain that to students. Now, you’d want to be careful about causation and correlation and all that… you can’t turn it into, “PRE-MARITAL SEX MAKES YOUR HEART MELT AND YOUR BRAIN GO CRAZY!”, but you can point to the link and explore it.Report
But what if it does make your heart melt and your brain go crazy?!
More seriously, I think it’s really hard to pull off. Not the least of which because liberals (and myself, for that matter) don’t want young people to be uncomfortable with their sexuality. While there are very stringent limits to how I would want this to manifest itself, it would nonetheless be a lot more than folks to our right would be comfortable with. Which makes this a political battlefield.
But on the subject, studies have suggested that there is a correlation between the age at which a young woman becomes sexually active, and the number of partners she has, and the probability of later divorce. This correlation does not apply to young men. Is mentioning this a form of moralizing (even if you don’t moralize about divorce being bad)? If the reasoning for this is lingering sexism, would mentioning this be perpetuating that sexism? How should the possibility of confounding factors be framed?
And then, the kids will ask questions…
This is not to advocate any particular approach (and I don’t really want to sidetracked into a discussion about the possible flaws in the results – we will often see flaws, or not see flaws, according to our ideology). I just find the notion of stripping worldview from this discussion, even the bland sort of discussion that would only occur at a government education institution, to be kind of hard.Report
in other West Virginia public school administration retaliation for speaking up for what you believe in news…Report
maybe school administrators just really like paying into kids’ college funds these days? the ny post school of, uh, schooling.Report
Ya know, I understand that schools have some unique powers when it comes to regulating dress and, by extension, speech. And I understand that there exist circumstances when their obligations as educators and as the keepers of their charges during the school day must do so. But when weighed against the costs, including sending the message that power is not balanced by responsibility, I think it should be used only in the most extreme of situations.
This, and most other such stories, is not that.Report
I would add to this that I cannot, for the life of me, imagine a situation where it is appropriate to send a kid to jail for a shirt he or she is wearing. That’s what puts my jaw on the floor.Report