*Huh? You obviously read the headline. I’m not offended if you were puzzled. I had the same feelings writing it. Or should I say, rewriting it. You see, when I read about the response Alyssa Wilson’s school administrators had when she was brave enough to complain about the recent sexual harassment she had gone through, I was stopped in my tracks by their response.
Talk about blaming the victim.
Why the hell would they give a contract to Wilson? No, what the hell is a CONTRACT doing in the mix anyway?
?There is no way a contract is going to help me and keep me safe, or the other girls that attend Las Vegas High School,? Wilson told Yahoo Beauty via Twitter when messaging about the incident. ?There needs to be more actions done than just a piece of paper.?
Previous to the Yahoo Beauty followup, Wilson had made her feelings known by posting this photo and comment on her page.
“So you get sexually harassed at school and all you get is a contract????”
Her tweet obviously touched a nerve — to the tune of 800 likes, and more than 600 shares.
But let’s back up. As they say: What had happened was, a male student approached 16-year-old Alyssa in the hallway at school on the morning of May 8. He asked her if she was cold, and then, get this — proceeded to lift up her dress as he repeatedly inquired, “what do you have under there?”
Can you imagine someone having that kind of nerve; and furthermore, what it would do to a girl? Of course the act left Alyssa, who had previously heard of this particular harasser, traumatized. Once she got to class, she couldn’t even focus and found herself crying uncontrollably. Her teacher noticed and asked what was wrong.
Alyssa relayed the incident and asked the teacher to escort her to the school office so that she could fill out an incident report.
Yahoo Beauty writes…
According to Wilson, the school?s dean of students, Colin Purcell, pulled security-camera footage to confirm the allegations were accurate, but found that ?camera footage glitches? right at the moment of the dress lift-up left Purcell to determine there was no evidence.
As a result, the administrator offered to have Wilson and the male student both sign the contract ? basically agreeing to stay away from each other and not speak about the incident ? and then required that the young man?s parents come in for a conference.
Now I don’t profess to be a specialist in this area, but again, asking the victim, who did absolutely nothing wrong from what I can tell, sign such a contract is ludicrous by any standard of decency. Add to this the whole camera glitch thing that happened at the exact moment of the incident.
Even with a “glitch” it seems the before and after of the moment can be a strong enough image to determine what happened in the middle. You can see someone lifting a girl’s dress.
Why on earth would a school try to cover something like this up?
And how sick are we of the whole “we can’t speak publicly on specific student incidents” statement, which is what was offered when the media reached out to Clarke County School District spokesman, Dave Sheehan.
He did say this:
?All [Clark County] schools take sexual harassment and bullying very seriously. We follow all regulations by the state and the school district very seriously. We follow to the letter all regulations to ensure the safety and well-being of our students.?
Yeah. We’re sick of the blanket statements too.
Sheehan even attempted to justify why the “contract” is necessary.
It is to have students ?say they will keep things to themselves so that it doesn?t become a big, schoolwide issue. You know how things travel, words get twisted, rumors fly ? it can create a big issue for the school.?
Rumors fly? Words get twisted?
That’s how they’replaying this?
SMH.
No wonder the dude who felt so free to do something like this didn’t think twice. No accountability. It’ll be interesting to see how this parent conference turns out.
Alyssa Wilson, if you get wind of our concern, don’t hesitate to hit me up, sweetie.
