Mass. has strong antibullying laws. But a case in Southwick highlights their limitations.
What did school administrators at Southwick Regional School know about alleged incidents of racial bullying, when did they know it, what did they do about it at the time — and what are they doing now to make sure school policies align with the requirements of the state’s antibullying law?
Those questions flow from a troubling incident involving six eighth-grade students who have been charged for their alleged roles in facilitating and participating in what Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni described in a press release as a “hateful, racist online chat that included heinous language, threats and a mock slave auction.”
But what about the adults? Critics of the school say that an unchecked culture of bullying at the school predated the slave auction and was allowed to fester over time. “The slave auction was one of several incidents,” Bishop Talbert W. Swan, president of the Greater Springfield NAACP, told the Globe editorial board. He faults school officials for failing to take those prior incidents seriously and address them as required by the state’s antibullying law.
For example, Allyson Lopez, the mother of an eighth-grader at the school, told the editorial board that since last September, her daughter experienced five different incidents that her mom characterizes as racial bullying. On three occasions, she said, her daughter was called the “n” word, she said. On one occasion, a derogatory comment was made about her daughter’s hair. According to Lopez, her daughter chose to handle several incidents on her own. But Lopez said she communicated with school officials, including an assistant principal, about two of those incidents. “The school should have handled it by calling the students in, having some educational programs going on, having an assembly of some kind. This was not done,” she said.
The fifth incident involved a Snapchat group chat that targeted her daughter in connection with the online slave auction. According to an official in the DA’s office, a screenshot of the conversation was deliberately shown to Lopez’s daughter. The goal was to make sure “the price the kids were putting on her” would get back to her, the official said. “She was afraid to go to school. She was targeted,” he said.
A spokesperson for Jennifer Willard, superintendent of Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District, did not respond to an email seeking comment. According to a Globe report, the principal of Southwick Regional School apologized for the incident involving the slave auction, and said the school would be holding counseling and support sessions in the aftermath.
According to a timeline put out by the district attorney’s office, what is described as “a group” of eighth-grade students created a group chat over Snapchat that began late in the evening on Feb. 8 and carried over into the early morning hours of Feb. 9. On that chat, “several students” uttered “hateful and racist comments, including notions of violence toward people of color, racial slurs, derogatory pictures and videos and a mock slave auction,” that were specifically directed at two fellow eighth-grade students. The chat was reported to Southwick school authorities on Feb. 9. On Feb. 12, “several students,” including all those who are now charged by the DA, were immediately suspended as an emergency removal. On Feb. 15, “several students were formally suspended.”
At that point, the DA took over the investigation and decided to bring criminal charges against six students, whose names have not been released because of their age. They have been charged with a variety of crimes, including interference with civil rights, threat to commit a crime, and witness interference.
The online slave auction, coupled with the decision to bring criminal charges, made national headlines. That in turn triggered what an official in the DA’s office described as a sometimes vitriolic backlash from some who
But the antibullying law is only as strong as the policy a school puts in place to enforce it. If the policy is weak or nonexistent, the victim lives with the consequences.
think the response is overreach. But the DA said he wanted to send a message, and Swan, from the Greater Springfield NAACP, said he supports that goal. “I look at it from the lens of a Black man in America, who has seen how this criminal justice system responds to young Black men and women and in many instances does not give them the benefit of doubt, of being innocent children susceptible to making mistakes,” Swan said. But Swan also suggests that if school officials were more involved in efforts to stop the bullying from the start, it might not have escalated to that point. The office of state Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell is now in touch with Swan, school officials, and the DA.
As spelled out in a Globe explainer, the state’s antibullying law was enacted in 2010 following the suicides of South Hadley High School student Phoebe Prince and Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old from Springfield, both of whom were victims of bullying. All school employees are required to report suspected incidents of bullying to school administrators and principals and other designated educators are required to investigate each case. The law, which was updated in 2014, now requires districts to also acknowledge in prevention plans that certain students may be more vulnerable to bullying based on ”actual or perceived differentiating characteristics,” including race, religion, economic status, gender identity, and sexual orientation; and to address how such students will be supported.
But the antibullying law is only as strong as the policy a school puts in place to enforce it. If the policy is weak or nonexistent, the victim lives with the consequences. And that is what Allyson Lopez said she is seeing now with her daughter. “She does not speak of the situation. She feels very much traumatized and she will be traumatized for a long time to come,” Lopez said.
What does Lopez want from the school? “They need accountability. They need to recognize there’s a problem within their school, within their district.” The criminal charges do not change that, she said. After all, two days after the six eighth-graders were charged, racist language was found written on a bathroom wall in the school.