Covington Kids Exonerated from Wrong-doing

[_Jersey Girl]

honor consider aggregates and how they formed, dispersed, and formed again during the event. Did the symbols and symbolic meanings change during the continuous reorganization of the aggregates? When the individuals that make up the aggregate change composition, shouldn't we consider the possibility that the symbolism they employed also changed meaning?

How can we determine what the intentions and motivations behind the behaviors and use of symbols really were?

Because we know what they mean to us when we choose or decline to use them?

You went over my head, Jersey Girl. My sense is this is getting into a particular vein of something you've studied. I'm just a dummy who deals with symbols in a very visual way now and again. Maybe you can explain more about what these terms mean and how they apply?

I couldn't go over your head if I tried, honor. Aggregates are temporary groups of people who are in the same place at the same time, usually for a common purpose. Aggregates of people often have no relationship outside of the common purpose--the people you talk to and interact with when your plane is delayed. You register frustration, talk about all the times United delayed your flight, how you'll never choose United as your carrier ever again in your life, you talk about how the delay is affecting your plans, you spend an hour talking to these folks until the delay is over, and the group disbands when the flight is ready to board. It's a sociological term.

Aggregates typically disband after the purpose is achieved. You're never going to see or interact with the people who shared the flight delay again. Though, that's not always the way an aggregate works. It could be made up of people that you know such as all of the people who attended your birthday party who interacted as a group to celebrate with you. Some of those people will see each other again for a common purpose. The behavior of the group might change along with the composition of the newly formed aggregate. There could be dynamic changes in the group due to the role everyone takes on in the group.

Example: Leader.

I think it's possible to describe the ever changing clusters of students as forming aggregates. Let me label some of the groups that I see.

1. Students doing the high school cheer
2. Students doing the tomahawk chant
3. Students responding verbally to the Black Israelites
4. Students responding verbally to the Native Americans

When I consider the behavior of each group (aggregate) of students (the composition of which changed minute by minute) I wonder why the students behaved as a group in the ways that they did.

The high school cheer group, for example, has a leader to whom leadership was delegated by an adult in a position of authority.

What was the intention of the cheer leader?

1. Turn a negative into a positive?
2. Rally the troops in case they have to employ a physical defense against the Native American's or the Black Israelites?
3. Kill some time before the buses arrived?
4. Posturing to the two groups of adults that were present?

We don't know what the intentions of the aggregates were because we're looking largely at non-verbal cues to do our bidding. We hear the school cheer but do we know what it means to the leader or the group performing the cheer?

I reckon we could do the same analysis of the tomahawk chant and other groups that I listed. And, in my view, we'd still come up short because most of the interaction was non-verbal.

When Phillip's approaches and enters the group, do we hear even one student say "Hey, what are you guys doing?"

Nope.

In any case, I'm posting on the run right now but I do want to mention one last thing in this post. You may have seen my pull the plug response to EA regarding the student's "bad behavior". I came back and listed various child behaviors and characterized them. He says that he is trained in much the same way. Yet, more recently he has posted that the students should experience guilt and contrition for their bad behavior.

I say that's jumping the gun.

I think that first, it must be determined if the students understood that their actions could be considered offensive. If not, then I see an opportunity to teach a school wide awareness unit in how their behaviors can be received by the groups with whom they interacted.

Near the end of the educational unit of learning, I would discuss the tomahawk chant and possibly the black face issue. I would engage students in evaluating those behaviors and practices, and encourage them to develop alternative behaviors and practices that support school spirit. Then, and only then, are the ideas coming directly from the students based on their own evaluation as to whether or not those activities are offensive enough to eliminate them in favor of something more positive.

Once the education piece is satisfied, and if the students repeat said behaviors, THEN I'd drop the hammer on the students by doling out consequences.

Now. I am about to join an aggregate of largely female adults with whom I will chat about various topics and come home with a new hair cut.

Thanks for wading through this if you did.

:-)

[_canpakes]

Jersey Girl, it sounds like the general idea is to give (the) students one mulligan, assuming that afterwards there’s a discussion with them about potential issues with whatever behavior was being exhibited in an incident. Otherwise there’s no intent to ‘judge’ or demand contrition/apology prior that process being initiated. Is this an accurate summation?

[_Jersey Girl]

Jersey Girl, it sounds like the general idea is to give (the) students one mulligan, assuming that afterwards there’s a discussion with them about potential issues with whatever behavior was being exhibited in an incident. Otherwise there’s no intent to ‘judge’ or demand contrition/apology prior that process being initiated. Is this an accurate summation?

cp I had to look up what a mulligan is. ;-) It's giving someone a second chance and I read that the term comes from golf, but I get it.

Mainly, yes, but I wouldn't look at the mulligan as being offered in the Lincoln Memorial incident. I would look at giving the second chance after the school has delivered the information and education applicable to the incidents that were captured on video. I would, in fact, use the video as part of the educational piece.

Here is the vision statement of Covington Catholic High School:

OUR VISION STATEMENT

We foster an environment of educational excellence and equip young men with a set of spiritual and moral values to become strong Christian leaders and models of our Catholic faith. We cultivate self-confidence and integrity to energize students to meet the demands of higher education, personal vocations and the challenges of life. We encourage respect for others and service to the community. Our goal is that our students will be inspired to continuously grow in their Catholic faith, strive for physical and mental well-being, and embrace academic and personal excellence.

https://www.covcath.org/about/page-5/mission

I would definitely use that vision statement as the lead in and configuration of the course content that I wanted to develop on their behalf.

Covington Catholic HS is in the unique position of potentially affording their students the opportunity to attach real life experiences to their personal academic and spiritual goals and facilitate the student's learning about such things as American History, Civil Rights. Civics, innovation, critical thinking, Biblical-religious-spiritual applications and implications (because Christ is invited into these private school classrooms), psychology and sociology.

This is how I would describe that process.

1. Teach the content.
2. Allow students to self evaluate and evaluate the behaviors they engaged in as to whether or not those behaviors are offensive to others, why, and if something needs to change.
3. Allow students to develop their own self governing solutions.
4. Allow students to develop their own consequences for violating the self governing plan.

I may have left something out. If so, I'll add to this later. I think that in spite of the bevy of law suits, it is still possible for the school to act on the opportunity to teach. It is an educational institution after all. And, if I can do this with young children, I see no reason that a group of high school educators cannot devote themselves to this type of learning experience.

If the school fails to do this, in my eyes, the school has failed it's students.

[_Jersey Girl]

Bunch of stuff snipped out

Nah. If you had asked me if I thought that at least some of the practices might be eliminated or replaced with more suitable alternatives I would have said yes and identified them, and offered up how I thought that process might look with an eye to the benefit of the student's education.

I think that it was earlier in this thread or the other thread on these events in a post to RI where I mentioned a whole curriculum web that could have been developed for the students including a field trip to a reservation where the Native Americans specifically in Kentucky's own history were forced to move to.

In any case, what I was getting at when I essentially wrote that people need to stop looking at everything through a racist lens is that sometimes we see what we're looking for, we project our own biased thinking on to the behaviors of others and basically, sometimes a cigar is just a freaking cigar.

;-)

(I just thought of a comparison that we are both familiar with that might work here. Jersey drops F bombs on MDB = she must be angry or somehow emotional as an assumption. When we both know that Jersey isn't necessarily dropping bombs, she's just using the F word as part of her expressive vocab. Cam even mentioned this aspect of East Coasters in his account of his visit to Jersey on the AP hike last summer. So “F” no, she's not always angry when she says “F”. In fact, she's hardly ever angry when she uses the F word. :-D )

[_EAllusion]

There’s a lot of tension between the idea that the students’ behavior could be seen as offensive upon self-reflection, especially after education on Native issues, and that it’s inappropriate to bring racism into the discussions. This kind of “maybe mistakes were made” approach glosses over the fact that what would be offensive about the behavior is directly tied to racism. It’s not like tomahawk chops were bad because of the lack of rhythm.

[_Jersey Girl]

There’s a lot of tension between the idea that the students’ behavior could be seen as offensive upon self-reflection, especially after education on Native issues, and that it’s inappropriate to bring racism into the discussions. This kind of “maybe mistakes were made” approach glosses over the fact that what would be offensive about the behavior is directly tied to racism. It’s not like tomahawk chops were bad because of the lack of rhythm.

You know what, I'm trying to have an thought exercise over here and you keep screwing it up by making claims that do not exist or at least do not appear in my posts. No one is glossing over the racist interpretations of the behaviors, least of all me.

You're 50 miles behind me. Go away from me with that stuff.

[_EAllusion]

Sorry, I was responding to the person repeatedly complaining about viewing their behavior through the lens of racism.

[_Lemmie]

Bunch of stuff snipped out

Nah....

(I just thought of a comparison that we are both familiar with that might work here. Jersey drops F bombs on MDB = she must be angry or somehow emotional as an assumption. When we both know that Jersey isn't necessarily dropping bombs, she's just using the F word as part of her expressive vocab. Cam even mentioned this aspect of East Coasters in his account of his visit to Jersey on the AP hike last summer. So “F” no, she's not always angry when she says “F”. In fact, she's hardly ever angry when she uses the F word. :-D )

I have NO CLUE what any of that refers to. Does this belong to some other conversation you are having with someone else about some aspect of East Coasters????

Anyway....

There’s a lot of tension between the idea that the students’ behavior could be seen as offensive upon self-reflection, especially after education on Native issues, and that it’s inappropriate to bring racism into the discussions. This kind of “maybe mistakes were made” approach glosses over the fact that what would be offensive about the behavior is directly tied to racism. It’s not like tomahawk chops were bad because of the lack of rhythm.

You know what, I'm trying to have an thought exercise over here and you keep screwing it up by making claims that do not exist or at least do not appear in my posts. No one is glossing over the racist interpretations of the behaviors, least of all me.

You're 50 miles behind me. Go away from me with that stuff.

Glad to hear that, because that was not the impression this post gave:

As a Scot I'm personally and deeply offended by their Braveheart march where students are seen bare chested wearing shorts and pseudo kilts following a piper.

Oh wait. I'm not.

How do we characterize the students in complete white face? Are those the hallmarks of white supremacy?

These are school spirit practices and traditions. People need to get a grip and quit viewing everything through the lens of racism.

But, as you pointed out,we are 50 miles past "glossing over the racist interpretations of behaviors."

In any case, what I was getting at when I essentially wrote that people need to stop looking at everything through a racist lens is that sometimes we see what we're looking for, we project our own biased thinking on to the behaviors of others and basically, sometimes a cigar is just a freaking cigar.

Speaking of projecting "our own biased thinking," here is an additional point from that article I quoted earlier:

Many of the symbols surrounding Indian mascots (such as feather headdresses) and much of the behavior encouraged by Indian mascots (such as Indian war chants) disrespects important spiritual symbols of the Native American people. Many Native Americans find Indian mascots to be “deeply offensive” since these mascots “mock ancient and sacred culture” by portraying objects that are sacred to Native Americans, such as Eagle feathers, in an irreverent light.99

These Indian mascots “mock[] sacred rituals, mimic[] hallowed traditions, and caricaturiz[e] a proud race in debilitating ways.”100

The alleged mockery is especially evident given that Indian mascots are used in a sports context. The sacred traditions of Native Americans are mimicked—not during tribal ceremonies for religious purposes—but during sporting events for entertainment purposes. Native American culture and religion is “demean[ed], insult[ed], harass[ed], and misrepresent[ed]” all for “the sake of school athletics.”101

The use of Indian mascots arguably mocks the sacred beliefs and traditions that many Native Americans hold dear.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Lemmie,

How do you feel about institutions that reach agreements with tribes to use their heritage and imagery as sports mascots?

- Doc

[_honorentheos]

Perhaps this is an odd question, but was anyone else a member of the order of the arrow through scouting? Is it still actively engaged in? It's difficult for me to imagine it wouldn't be seen as seriously guilty of cultural appropriation from what I recall of it.