If only it were as easy as firing somebody to get rid of the scourge that is school bullying. Apparently the South Hadley parents who are organizing a protest at the school tonight - seeking signatures on a petition calling for the ouster of Superintendent Gus Sayer and South Hadley High School Principal Daniel Smith - think it is.
What we need here is clear thinking, not retribution, which got us into this situation.
Tonight's protest was planned to coincide with the first meeting of an anti-bullying task force at 6:30 p.m. at South Hadley High School. The group's charge is big: Map out a community response to the high school's bullying problem, as it came to light in connection with a young woman named Phoebe Prince.
Prince, 15, committed suicide in her home Jan. 14 after enduring weeks of bullying from students who by now no longer attend the school, according to school officials.
Ever since Prince's death, anger over the way the school department handled the situation has simmered, boiling over at times in public gatherings. Over the past month, in widely discussed online posts, people named and unnamed have slammed school officials for their handling of the case, both before and after Prince hung herself.
They take issue with the way the school has communicated with the public about the tragedy and its aftermath. They criticize the speed with which punishment has been handed down to the students identified as her bullies.
All these matters are fair game for heated discussions. But there are a couple things to consider. The question of an administrator's ouster is best left for the context of a performance evaluation. If they don't have parent feedback as part of that evaluation process already, schools should consider adding it. And on the question of punishment, schools need to be fair, and officials can't dispense punishment based on Facebook posts. That's as it should be.
On the wider issue of bullying at South Hadley High, if people are solely focused on laying blame, they may miss an opportunity. There could be scant time or energy left to come up with a creative plan to change a culture that allowed bullying to go on unchecked and unchallenged until a lost and hurting 15-year-old freshman felt she had no option but to end her life.
That tragic act is a wake-up call for everyone that something is very wrong, but not just in the office of the administrators. For that matter, why not ask all parents what they are doing to monitor their teenagers' postings on Facebook, or what is contained in the many text messages they send out.
The death of Phoebe Prince indicates that something went wrong from the classroom to the school committee board room to the high school hallways to the kitchen tables of South Hadley High School parents.
One South Hadley parent told a Gazette reporter that the unbridled anger towards administrators on Facebook stems from parents' frustrations that they "don't have any other voice."
Well, they do have a voice. They should go to the anti-bullying task force meeting tonight.
But if they're going to talk, they should also listen. A first step would be for people to stop attacking each other.
Another is to stop being defensive. They also will need to keep in mind that finding a solution to a public menace like bullying - a phenomenon which everyone agrees has been around forever - is not going to be easy.
It is certainly not as simple as firing someone or accepting a forced letter of resignation. That is not only unrealistic, it lets people walk away from the table before achieving long-lasting change. That change depends on a grassroots effort involving youth, parents, teachers, assistants, secretaries, librarians, janitors and administrators. In other words, everybody.
Maybe, as critics have said, tonight's task force meeting hasn't been well organized. But it's a starting point. It will be a tragedy if people remain outside drumming up ill will rather than going inside to roll up their sleeves in an effort to seek solutions to an entrenched, problem.
That would mean Phoebe Prince died in vain, only compounding the tragedy of her death.
