Teacher Sex Assault Discussion Continues...
Discussion of former Gilford teacher guilty of sexually assaulting a student some 6 years ago at the Gilford Middle High School continues.
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I first wrote on the topic after the story broke. You can click here for my original piece. Then a letter appeared in the Citizen penned by William Zeckhausen. Click here to read it. Skip responded with a piece posted on our sister site, granitegrok.com. You can read it by clicking here. On August 10th, Alec O'Meara of the Gilford Steamer weighed in on with the weekly editorial. He has forwarded it here to GilfordGrok to add to the mix...
Up on your Nabokov by Alec O'Meara- Editor, The Gilford Steamer
Doug Lambert is right. Well, check that. He’s almost right; we’ll give him that. Lambert, a member of the Gilford Budget Committee and longtime local columnist, recently wrote about the sentencing of former middle school teacher Matt McGonagle. In his column, he raises some interesting questions. He also raises some we disagree completely with, namely insinuating that a cover-up occurred so that the school could continue raising taxes and avoid bad press. We don’t think that’s the case here..Obviously, if there had been a cover-up, that is very serious business. In this particular case, were there both teachers and students at the time who knew something was up, but never went to authorities? It is a fair question, but since the entire administration of the middle school, high school, and SAU office has turned over since the incident, the question lacks the explosive implications it would have had otherwise..However, here’s a much more interesting question that is still in the ballpark of Lambert’s comments: how much of a role does gender play in how we all react to these cases? More specifically, would that courtroom have been as full of friends and family supporting McGonagle if this had been about a 14-year-old boy instead of a girl? Would there have been as many “blind eyes” back in 2000? Does he get two years? What if he was black, or Hispanic? What happens then?
It could be argued that McGonagle benefited to some degree from a good deal of our own stereotypes. Good looking white guy, good family, respectable job,and so on. Have you heard anyone try to explain this away by saying, “at least she was in high school” this week? Did you say it to yourself, even though you know in your heart that 14 is just as bad as 13, or 17? Knowing nothing about her, have you, the reader, created any totally unfair preconceived notions about the victim, perhaps about what she wore to school?.
If this had been about a 14-year-old boy and the accused teacher had been a 30-year-old woman, we know the story plays out much differently. In that version, the student becomes a pop-culture hero and the teacher is little more than fodder for late-night talk monologues. It’s worth pointing out..
What McGonagle did is wrong in every possible moral, ethical, and legal sense of the word, and we’re very sorry, but the “isolated incident” stuff doesn’t really fly with us here. Perhaps kids performing vandalism can be written off as an “isolated incident.” One car accident in 10 years can get the “isolated incident” treatment. Good people don’t sexually assault a minor 16 years younger than they are, regardless of the genders involved, even just once. We don’t know what the standard sentence for this is off-hand, but two years in prison seems awfully generous to us..
So, to a degree, Lambert hit on an interesting topic of discussion. It’s a talk worth having with your own family, but after that, let’s all put this ugly chapter behind us and move forward..
Oh, and for the record, it would be completely out of line to bring this particular issue up in a Budget Committee meeting, guys, especially if it was used as a motive to propose a budget cut. Even if you felt this issue was representative of a problem in the school, and we don’t, but even if you did, then you should be aiming to raise this policy issue with the School Board, not the Budget Committee.
Doug responds to the last paragraph:
Don't worry Alec, I don't need this as a motive to propose a budget cut- I have plenty of other areas and reasons to go for cuts- starting with the bloated SAU office...
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PS- Nabokov wrote the novel Lolita...
