A Well-Balanced Perspective
I knew, from my NGRD investigation, that the minority party’s point of view is one of the most crucial views to show. Interviewing members of the administration and FCPS would give them a formal platform to speak to students through a party that they trusted, tjTODAY. This objective platform gave us the chance to expose students to the administrator’s perspective and administrators to the student’s perspective. We served as a conduit for discussion between the school and its students, gathering over 40 pages of transcripts from 17 interviews.
Interviewing the Girls
We knew right off the bat that it would be essential to find girls who’d been affected by the person in question and publicize what had happened to them. Most girls did not want to cause more damage to themselves by opening up their experiences to criticism on social media; however, through tjTODAY, they would have a comfortable and credible platform to express their experience, where they words wouldn’t be taken out of context but rather paired alongside the similar experiences of many others.
We reached out to Claudia who had spoken so bravely on behalf of the other girls affected by the perpetrator. She spoke to the group chat to ask girls to come to me if they were willing to share their story. We had one source willing to go on record outside of Claudia and protected the identity of the other sources who were still uncomfortable with having the public associate their name with sexual harassment. We clearly stated their reasons in the article to provide transparency for their anonymity.
Defining the Language
“Voice to the Victims” features the most extensive research I’ve completed: together, Angel and I compiled a six-page document of links, paragraphs, statistics, and initiatives occurring at the county, state, and national level. I focused on county guidelines and programs involving Title IX, a section of the Education Amendments which guarantees equal treatment of all genders and protection from possible retaliation from filing a complaint.
Part of our research was also looking into a variety of sources which defined sexual harassment, assault, and violence. This spawned from a knowledge gap that we witnessed in interviews and students: there was no straightforward definition of what differentiates assault and harassment. So, we compiled those definitions into an image featured near the top of the article to introduce those baseline definitions early on.
One interesting concept I explored was this idea of sexual coercion: pressuring someone into providing sexual favors by wearing them down or making them feel guilty about not doing it. One source recalls feeling guilty and worn down by the perpetrator’s repeated requests to the point where she finally gave in. From our research, we realized that it was actually a common phenomenon, often not easily recognizable, used by harassers to manipulate victims into complying.
What is Title IX?
Though alum Claudia Richoux breached this topic in her TJ Vents post, we decided an infographic would present that same information in a visually appealing and clean way that’d entice the reader to know more. We used Know Your Title IX, one of the sources she linked, pasting all the points onto our document and summarizing the most important, relevant subtopics onto the infographic. Through Infogram, we used icons and colors to create that Infographic and provided that “bullet-point” information right after we discuss Richoux’s posts.
What’s Been Done: What to Do Next
We interviewed Title IX Coordinator Kevin Sills about the FCPS sexual harassment presentation: going off a Washington Post article detailing changes for the 2017-2018 school year, we presented him with common feedback (not enough people pay attention, don’t take it seriously) and allowed him to respond.
This was partially based off of a 3-page document of questions we asked sources including victims, Richoux, FCPS employees, assistant principals, counselors, and our principal. This let us maintain consistency throughout our interviews and ask for the information we needed: often with the harassment victims, however, our interviews were solely based on follow-up questions that dug into the responses that they gave. The questions were thoroughly edited to avoid bias and produce meaningful responses.
When I interviewed the girls who had been subjected to the harassment, my information gathering process went in a few common directions:
- Under what circumstances did you get to know the perpetrator?
- follow up: what did he do to gain your trust?
- were you afraid to come forward? what encouraged you to do so in the end?
- unique/specific to each person: did he try to meet you in person? did he continue after you said no? what occurred from that? is this [blank] pattern of behavior one that you witnessed in your situation?
- What are your thoughts about the FCPS sexual harassment curriculum and what has been done at the local level? What is it doing well and where can it improve?
- A video was sent out by Dr Glazer regarding FCPS’ commitment to preventing sexual harassment. The video suggests schools should prevent harassment by school wide education, changes to the perpetrator’s schedule, and frequent checkups with the victim. To your knowledge: to what extent has TJ lived up to those expectations? To what extent has it not?
- Is there a stigma surrounding sexual harassment in general? What can we do to eliminate it? What do you wish the community could do better in order to combat sexual harassment?
- Conversely, what factors do you think have contributed to the school’s ability to prevent it so far (until this case)?
- What do you wish people understood more?
The first question, in particular, allowed the sources to open up to us about their story; their stories showed us just how they were more than just an incident that had happened to them, that they had been empathetic people concerned about the perpetrator’s well-being, when that empathy had been used against them to take advantage of their kindness for sexual favors.
Town Hall
The school held a town hall on Feb. 13, 2017, in the lecture hall with specialists from FCPS. This was due to the social media coverage of sexual harassment allegations and was held to address those claims.
This town hall lasted 40 minutes, extending over into class time; Angel and I were there before, during, and after the meeting. I submitted 3 questions on the Google Form and Dr. Glazer answered 2 of those 3 questions in the time given to us. All participants denied being videotaped or pictured; however, I transcribed one of the responses below:
“I mentioned that we were in communication with the Office of Safety and Wellness and our Title IX Coordinator. If we have questions to ask, how should we contact them?”
“I’m not positive how well it’s apparent on our website, but I want you guys to know that if you contact the Office of Wellness and Safety Relations, we still accept sexual discrimination and harassment [cases] from students and their families. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to involve your administration, because in working with OCR, it’s been clear to us that administration are really the best ones to handle incidents. They’re the ones who know your coaches, they’re the ones who knows the situations that you’re dealing with rather than some person from HR who’s looking into the matter.”
Karin Rodriguez, Equity and Compliance Specialist
We ended up completing follow up interviews with 3 of the people on the panel: Evan Glazer (principal), Officer Richards (the SR&O officer), Pam Gravitte (assistant principal) and Karin Rodriguez. This town hall had come close on the heels of the beginning of our investigation, something that had actually jumpstarted our efforts and began our conversation with sources including our school’s administrative staff.
Through interviewing Dr. Glazer, we also discovered the discipline intervention checklist of repercussions that must be dealt to a student before the school is allowed to refer someone to the superintendent. This gave readers a look into what happens behind the scenes without putting breaking the school’s confidentiality agreements.
Article: https://www.tjtoday.org/20761/showcase/voice-to-the-victims/
Christine Zhao's Journalism Portfolio 