Kevin Jennings was appointed by President Obama to the position of Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug Free schools, AKA, the Safe Schools Czar. Jennings is currently embroiled in a controversy over his fitness as the Safe School Czar.
In his autobiography, Jennings describes an incident that he did not report, while he was a high school teacher, in 1988, in which a 15 year old gay male student of his reported having sex with an older man he’d met in a bus station bathroom. There are several different versions of the story, but, the issue is not so much the actual story, but about his admission that he did not report the incident, as required by Massachusetts law, and as common sense should dictate.
At the moment, there seems to be a technicality being raised, as a defense, that the student was actually 16 years old, at the time, and therefore, of the legal age of consent for sex, in MA. The student in question, now a mature adult, claims to have been sixteen at the time, and also that he never had sex with the older man.
I don’t know the exact language of the MA law; whether it specifies an age at which a teacher does not have to report suspected abuse; but that really doesn’t matter because Jennings should have reported the incident, if nothing else, for the good of the student.
The veracity of the former student, lacks credibility because he may be trying to protect Jennings. But, for purposes of assessing Jennings fitness for his position, it doesn’t matter what actually happened between the boy, and the older man; what matters, is that Jennings failed to report the incident.
Students at that age, often do not even realize when they are being taken advantage of, or when their naive natures are being abused. We already know how easy it is for predators to take advantage of children, including teenagers, and we have thousands of laws to protect children from child predators.
Heck, anyone who is raising, or has raised, teenagers, already knows how unthinking, and impulsive teenagers can be, and how seldom they stop and take stock of their actions, and the consequences. Their judgment is typically very poor.
The point is, teenagers, even sixteen year olds, still need to be protected from themselves. We do this in many ways; we control and limit their driving habits; we have curfew laws; they cannot buy cigarettes; they cannot consume alcohol, etc, etc. And we have laws protecting them physical, and mental abuse, and maltreatment, etc.
So, this controversy of the actual age of the student is a moot point. Jennings should have shown better judgment by reporting the incident, not just from a legal requirement, but out of good conscience, and concern for the well-being of the student.
Since 21 years have passed, and since the, now grown, student in question doesn’t appear to be complaining of any lasting harm, it was an okay decision, I suppose; Jennings was lucky. But, what if it wasn’t okay ? What if this student was being harmed at that time, and taken advantage of, and what if he were now still suffering, and living in a state of angst, because this teacher, Jennings, made a poor decision ?
And what was Jennings’ message to the student ? His advice was, “wear a condom”. If this is really the sum total of his advice, then Jennings did him a monumental disservice, and may have emboldened him to seek and experience sexual encounters in the belief that they are safe if a condom is worn. And this was in the late 1980′s, when AIDS was still death sentence. A little advice can be very dangerous.
Jennings’ response to the controversy: “Twenty-one years later I can see how I should have handled the situation differently. I should have asked for more information and consulted legal or medical authorities. Teachers back then had little training and guidance about this kind of thing. All teachers should have a basic level of preparedness. I would like to see the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools play a bigger role in helping to prepare teachers,”
Maybe it was a simple error in judgment by a young and inexperienced teacher; he blames it on being “unprepared”, which, according to him, was due to lack of teacher training, which he now endeavors to correct in his new position. Maybe, but I doubt it; I’ve been involved in the local school district, and, as these laws were enacted, the teachers, and anyone connected with the students were clearly schooled on reporting requirements, and the consequences if they did not report an incident. Teachers already knew their moral obligation to report abuse; they didn’t need to be “threatened” into reporting abuse; what they needed was to be protected when they did report abuse.
Jennings’ handling of this incident wasn’t just a simple error in judgment, and youthful inexperience, or poor training. It was about making a poor moral decision; he failed, and there is no amount of training that would have made a difference; a person either has good morals, or they don’t; as far as I can tell, he didn’t.
Of course, a person can always redeem themselves, but Jennings doesn’t really seem to be inclined in that direction, or, at least he hasn’t sought to defend himself with other than weak excuses. He wrote about the incident in a book that he published; he talked about it with pride; he talked about how the student was smiling for weeks thereafter. That doesn’t sound like enlightenment, to me.
It appears that his reconsideration of his actions, 21 years ago, has only occurred because it became a public controversy. I’m not sure that he would act differently, now, if this incident hadn’t been exposed.
So, should Jennings be fired from his current post ?
Suppose he were still a teacher, and suppose that the student were a girl, and the teacher were male, or female; would we forgive the teacher for keeping the matter a secret, and for telling the girl to make sure the older man used condoms ?
Would you want your child under the influence of that teacher ? How much would you trust that teacher ?
Since his position can now influence the education of our children on a scale much larger than a classroom, can he do any harm ? You bet he can.
And, just one other thought popped into my mind: from what I’ve read, Jennings was “in the closet” in 1988; the student in question must have known that Jennings was gay, else why would he seek his counsel. I wonder how teachers tell their students about their sexual preferences ?
And that is just my opinion
Spencer Holly
www.angrycalifornian.com
0066
=========================================
OTHER RESOURCES
This a great post, and discussion of the ongoing Kevin Jennings controversy, from GayPatriot.com:
Kevin Jennings Knew of Harry Hay’s NAMBLA Connections?
==========================================
