Has anybody read about this mess?

"the vice principal, Rita Wilson, made the girls prove that they were not wearing thong underwear before they were allowed into the dance on Friday."

Follow-up, or at least more information, is available here.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Answers

It is simply unbelievable.

My question is: WHY would they think they needed to check the underwear? Why? It's just so hideous. I don't understand it at all - what's the rest of the story, here? Does this school have some sort of history in which girls who wear thong underwear to dances have sex in the school, or something? Seriously, I don't get the reasoning for the underwear check. It's an awful story. Makes me think that vice-principal is mentally ill.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

The vice principal was on the Today Show yesterday morning. She said that the reason for the thong inspection was because at last year's dance, girls were pulling up their dresses and exposing their butts. Butt (pun intended), the mother of one of the children pointed out the fact that with the way that this was handled, the girls were all showing their butts anyway during the inspection.

The fact that she didn't check the overweight, or as she termed "matronly" girls as well makes me want to throw up. How about a little equal opportunity demoralizing of the female poopulation of the school?

This vice principal obviously really crossed the line. They should put her in a pair of thong underwear and hang her out in the middle of the town as punishment.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Poopulation? Hee hee! Gah, I really need it to be the weekend.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

said that the reason for the thong inspection was because at last year's dance, girls were pulling up their dresses and exposing their butts.

It's just so CRAZY! What difference does it make if they're wearing thongs or not? If a girl is going to go to the extent of pulling up her skirt to show her ass to a roomful of teenage boys, it does not matter what sort of bra and panties she is wearing, or not wearing, as the case may be. The problem is with the behavior, not the wardrobe!

How insane are these people? Rather than humiliating them by doing to them exactly what they were afraid of them doing, why didn't they say something like "If any student is caught exposing themselves to another student, parents will be called, students will be suspended, etc., because we don't condone you acting like TRASH in our school."

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

I really feel for the vice principal. It is very hard to regulate child's behavior in schoolthese days. The big reason is that more and more parents seem to think that teachers can't punish their kids.

I went to grad school with a lot of high school teachers and they had horror stories about disciplining a student and the parent coming back to the teacher and asking them, sometimes in these exact words, "Who the fuck do you think you are disciplining my kid!"

She crossed the line, but I can sympathize with what brought her there.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

MOC, I gotta go against you on this one.

She crossed the line in a way that makes me think something is personally wrong with her. This wasn't discipline, this was like, pre-discipline, which is something else entirely.

It's like saying "Well, all the pretty girls at this school are sluts, so by checking to see what underwear they have on, we can stop them before they do something we don't think they should do."

But who is to say they were going to even do what the teachers suspected? They were "disciplining" them - and it wasn't even discipline, really, it was something for which I have no words - for something that had not happened, nor had it even had the chance to happen.

Educators should not be solely responsible for the the behavioral growth of children, but they cannot go all Carrie on the student body like that. It simply is not their place to do so. If the girls had gone into the dance and started behaving in a way that was against school policy, i.e. lifting their skirts or whatever it was, then and only then could the school do anything, and in that case what they had the power to do would be to say "Your behavior is not acceptable at this school. You're suspended."

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Thong=slut?

I thought thong=takes reasonable steps to ward off VPL.

I was anti-thong before I got on Squishy, by the way. A good many of you are directly responsible for my now-loose morals.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Thong=slut?

Come on. You know that is not what I said.

I think the real thing here has nothing to do with thongs at all. It has to do with the expectation by these administrators that these girls were going to engage in sexual behavior of some kind on school grounds. I can certainly understand why they would not want that to happen, but how misguided were their efforts to stop it? To a teenage boy, underwear is underwear. It doesn't take much to reveal your ass to somebody, whether you are wearing a thong or not. Again, it's a behavioral issue, not a damn fashion issue.

There must be more to this story. It has to be that some plan was concocted by these kids, or one was rumored to be, to wear thongs on the night of the dance, or something, and do whatever it is they were accused of planning to do - and the vp heard about it and took these radically inappropriate measures to stop it.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

I applied for that job last week. Haven't heard back yet.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Using your logic, Al, the school can't be proactive in trying to enforce discipline. Which means there can't be locker searches or metal dectectors.

What she probably was thinking is that it is a lot harder to yank a kid off a dance floor when the music is pumping, and the lights are flashing and 400 teenage boys are in the middle of a hormonal rush because they just saw some booty, then it is turn them away at the door.

She was still over the line, though.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

No, no, Al, I know that's not what you said. It does seem to be the rationale this teacher is working with, though.

That and "It's not okay for the girls to show their butts to the boys, but it's perfectly okay for me to show the girls' butts to the boys."

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Yeah, and I think she wasn't just "over the line," she was WAY over it - like three counties away. I mean, it was wrong. And stupid. So stupid. Hey, you know what - sometimes when I wear pantyhose that have a built in panty, I don't wear underwear. I have been doing that since I started wearing pantyhose. So, using THAT logic, would it have been all right for a teacher at a highschool dance to lift up my skirt and check me out? Because I always wear pantyhose with skirts and because, in high school, I was far from matronly if you know what I am saying, and though it is highly unlikely I would engage in any ass-revealing, I can tell you for certain that I would throw DOWN if my high school vice pricipal tried to lift my skirt in front of anyone OR in total privacy.

The implication alone that it would make to me would be enough to offend me to the point that my family would call for her head on a platter.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Using your logic, Al, the school can't be proactive in trying to enforce discipline. Which means there can't be locker searches or metal dectectors.

I'll stipulate that proactive enforcement is important, even if it violates privacy, however:

Metal detectors to detect weapons. Locker searches to search out illegal and harmful drugs or weapons.

Panty checks to check... what?

The examples are not comparable.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

This vice principal was way over the line. Not only was her behavior inappropriate, I believe that it was criminal. Overreaction? As I see it, the vice principal forced women to partially strip in front of other students, faculty, and police officers.

There must be more to this story.

This is what I keep coming back to. Why didn't any of the other faculty or the police who were in attendance stop her? Where is it appropriate to ask anyone to raise her skirt? Why, when word got out about the practice, wasn't the vp immediately fired?

The superintendent said that the charges are being investigated. With the reports of so many witnesses, how hard an investigation is this?

Something's missing from this story.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Why wasn't she fired? Maybe this could be a case where a schoolboard doesn't give into public pressure and make a kneejerk reaction to please people who know only part of the story.

Maybe they sat down and said, "Hey, this is a woman who has dedicated her adult life to helping out our children. Why don't we hold off on judging her until we have all the facts?"

Or would that make too much sense?

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Well, yeah, it would make sense.

She shouldn't be fired unless the results of a full investigation call for her firing - no one should, and she hasn't been. But the whole thing is so freaking seedy, even if it was just a huge mistake and misjudgment on her part to examine the students like that.

The San Diego Union Tribue ran this story which details the previous year's party where a student did remove her underwear and expose herself during the dance.

But that still does not make the inspection at the door make sense, really. You can't accuse someone of not wearing underwear until they have proven in some way that they are not wearing it. It's just too much of a violation to do a check.

It's interesting to me that y'all are focusing on the fact that the vp did this in front of other students. I think I would feel that it would be just as bad to do it privately. The implication is that "I need to see if you're wearing appropriate undergarments because I expect you to do something lewd" is so insulting, even if it had happened at the prior year's dance - and anyway, the girl the year before had underwear ON and took it off after she got in the door. I just don't see the reasoning.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Here are a few more details about this story:

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/News/1427309/detail.html

And this has a sidebar with a school dress code list:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/04/30/life.underwear.reut/

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Why wasn't she fired? Maybe this could be a case where a schoolboard doesn't give into public pressure and make a kneejerk reaction to please people who know only part of the story. Maybe they sat down and said, "Hey, this is a woman who has dedicated her adult life to helping out our children. Why don't we hold off on judging her until we have all the facts?"

Two words: teachers' union.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Writergirl: Two words. No way. (smiley if I could emoticon without getting killed. Principals are never included in teachers' unions. They're administrators and they may or may not have their own union.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

I can't believe you guys haven't figured this out yet. I made a deal with Ms. Wilson. I promised her to show her my pee pee, if she'd expose all the bare butts of the girls. (I hate fat butts, by the way)

Why'd everyone get so upset? A deal's a deal, right?

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2002

Maybe they sat down and said, "Hey, this is a woman who has dedicated her adult life to helping out our children. Why don't we hold off on judging her until we have all the facts?"

I agree that we should wait until all the facts are in, but if what's being reported turns out to be correct, she needs to go. I don't care if she's dedicated her whole live to children. If you make an error in judgement this bad -- and I think this was really bad, on many levels -- it doesn't make too much of a difference what your prior record was.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2002

I agree that she should go if the story holds up and she actually did what is reported. I just think she should be given a chance to explain her actions before people start calling her a child molester, as some of the parents of the children involved her called her.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2002

My problem is with why the kids were letting this happen. I don't care how much I spent on the dress, hair, flowers, etc. -- get to the prom and some old hag is wanting to check out my undergarment situation? I'm raising hell. I'm asking other teachers if this is okay. I'm getting other girls to protest with me. I'm threatening lawsuit right then and there. I'm taking my teeny tiny cell phone out of my teeny tiny purse and calling my parents at that instant.

I already know that someone is going to say, "Kids aren't going to stand up to an authority figure, blah blah." But I have a real problem with that. Aren't we supposed to be raising children to know that when an adult asks them to do something of that nature that makes them feel uncomfortable or embarrassed or violated, they have the right to argue and say no? That they are ultimately in control of their own bodies?? This isn't fondling a toddler -- these are kids about to go out into the real world. Why weren't any alarm bells going off in their own heads?

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2002

I agree that she should go if the story holds up and she actually did what is reported.

I agree with this 100%. However, I'd really like to know what facts are in dispute?

If I may quote from this article (linked to above, I believe):

---

"Bisesto, the police officer, said he approached Assistant Principal Michael Mosgrove and asked him to talk to Wilson about her behavior. Bisesto said he does not know if Mosgrove spoke with Wilson, but he said the examinations did not stop."

---

The news reports that she was suspended pending an investigation, and the district claims that the investigation should take about 2 weeks. But the word of a police officer, with the weight it carries with it, pretty much closes the case for me.

I'll be interested to hear what happens. I still think the parents should press criminal charges, since this is terribly offensive behavior.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2002

But what if the boys all decided to wear these?

http://www.manties.net

sorry...had to add some levity. Seriously, I would be talking to a lawyer if I were one of those girls' parents. Even if it were just done in her office, "inspecting" a girl like that verges on or is sexual harrassment. Were I one of those girls, I would feel incredibly humiliated and violated for a teacher to yank up my dress. Teachers should discipline when it's appropriate. Violating a student's physical boundaries in that way is not appropriate.

Jeez, I remember being angry enough when we were told at my high school graduation that we could have our diplomas "revoked" by daring to wear shorts under our gowns. Still, no one yanked up my gown to verify my compliance.

-- Anonymous, June 12, 2002