When Hazel Juco saw discolored water coming from the sink at school she was rightly concerned- so she took a picture. The senior at John Glenn High School took the photo to her newspaper class where they discussed it and then she posted it to Facebook and Twitter and complained about the state of her school.
ABC 15 reports she said, “I always hope that someone will see it and want to help us. Because our school obviously doesn’t have money.”
But a short time later she found herself in the office. Her picture, it seems, was cause enough for an out of school suspension: inappropriate use of electronics in the restroom.
However, she feels she was singled out because she exposed a problem. The reality is that girls take bathroom selfies and Juco reports no one has ever gotten in trouble for them. So when her friends found out, dozens of them did just that- post bathroom selfies. And you guessed it, without a single problem.
Wayne-Westand Community Schools Superintendent Dr. Michele Harmala looked into what was happening and found that high school administrators had made mistakes; not only had they suspended the student for an inappropriate reason but they hadn’t report the water issue to maintenance (there was a pipe leading to that faucet that needed to be replaced). Both of those issues have now been resolved.
From the article:
“Dr. Harmala says the rule against cell phones in bathrooms aims to prevent inappropriate pictures of people, not pictures of building issues.
“The punishment is inappropriate. I am going to make sure the out of school suspension is expunged from the student’s record,” said Dr. Harmala.
Dr. Harmala wants students to know that if there is a building problem they feel is being ignored, they can report it to building maintenance or administration directly. Talking directly to the school allows them to address the issue sooner than if it’s just put on social media.
(Editor’s note: It’s pretty sad it took ABC NEWS to get Hazel back into school! Shame on the school who only cleaned up their little PR mess when the cameras were rolling.)
Source: ABC 15