Accidental collision equals assault and sexual harassment
Updated 27 October 2005: Suspension removed, Mangum allowed back in school. (Details at bottom of post)
Prank in briefs has broad fallout
Dylan Mangum, a 17-year-old junior at Wake Forest-Rolesville High School in the Wake Forest Public School System, lost an election to the homecoming court. He decided to pay a visit on the court anyway - during the homecoming game - in his underwear. His attempt at PG streaking resulted in him being suspended for the remainder of the school year and a disciplinary record including assaulting an employee, sexual harassment and sexual activity.
Mangum decided to have his fun Sept. 16, the night of the homecoming game against Knightdale High School. During the halftime celebrations, he stripped to bikini underwear and made a mad dash across the field, racing by Army Junior ROTC members and the homecoming court.
“I laughed,” said Brittney Tackett, 16, a junior. “He was wearing underwear. I didn’t mind.”
But he knocked over science teacher Samantha Pontrelli. Mangum said that it was an accident and that he didn’t realize he had bumped into her.
“My heart was racing,” he said. “I didn’t see her at the time.”
Mangum was suspended for ten days which was later extended for the remainder of the school year. Mangum now attends an alternative school that does not offer any of the advanced courses he had been taking. In his new school he is the only student taking US History and Chemistry courses. In addition to his newfound scholastic problems the assault and harassment in his records will make things difficult for him to get into college.
The suspension won’t automatically disqualify him from college admission, but it would lead to an investigation, said Laura McLean, senior associate director for admissions at N.C. State University.
“It’s going to be really hard for him,” [his mother] Mary Mangum said. “This year he would have been preparing [for college]. But he’s got nothing.”
In debate before the three teacher panel who recommended the long term suspension Principal Andre Smith argued that Mangum’s actions had put the school in a bad light. Smith has excellent experience in putting the school in a bad light since he was caught driving drunk in October of 2004. Smith was suspended for 3 weeks by the school board after pleading guilty to that crime. In comparison, Mangum was sentenced to 9 months in scholastic purgatory.
Contact information:
Wake Forest-Rolesville High School Administration
Wake County School Board
(Tip credit to Kevin Lacobie)
UPDATE 27 October 2005
School Reverses Decision To Suspend Student Who Ran Across Field In Underwear
After two appeals were denied Mary Mangum was considering homeschooling Dylan as an alternative to his sentence of alternative school. On Wednesday she received a call from Principal Andre Smith to set up a meeting to get Dylan back in school.
Dylan, who had been attending an alternative school during his suspension, will return to Wake Forest-Rolesville on Tuesday.
“We’re thrilled that he’s going back to school. That’s all he wants,” Mary Mangum said. “And we’re very grateful to the school for allowing him back.”
School officials said new information about the incident and the student came to light over the past six weeks, which prompted a re-evaluation of the original punishment.
It is somewhat amazing how often national media attention coincides with “new information” and “re-evaluation” in these cases.
(Tip credit to Daryl Cobranchi)
Incredible. This is a harmless, albeit stupid, prank that has happened over and over again for generations. In fact, many times they don’t even leave on their underwear. I could see maybe giving him detention, but a full-year suspension is overkill to say the least. If they are trying to teach him a lesson, they would leave him in school (and with detention, the days would be even longer) and the embarassment of merely showing his face would be punishment enough.
Not only that, but he was charged with sexual harassment and sexual activity… Activity? Did the article leave something out? Unreal.
Another example of “making an example of the student” and destroying him in the process. He made an extremely bad decision, as most teenagers do, but sexual harrassment and assault??? I think a two week in-house suspension where he had to write letters of apology to students, staff and administators would have done more to teach him a lesson, then to exclude him from school and destroy him with those terrible offenses on his school record. The people making these decisions don’t realize the terrible emotional impact that their decisions have on these young people. We may have lost another good student (who made a bad decision) to depression, alcohol and or drug dependency. I hope he has very supportive parents who can get him the counseling he will need. The exclusion of a student can destroy them. You can’t take their world right out from under them for one lousy mistake and bad decision and expect that you won’t have serious rebellion and emotional issues…
Deb
The obvious lesson is that the kid shouold have been driving around drunk instead of acting like a teenager.
This kid’s an idiot. I think he got what he deserved. (I’ll concede that the sexual assault allegations may be a little harsh.)
A lot of school officials operate under the “one good harsh punishment early in the school year and they fall in line for the rest of the year” theory. Does it work? I bet it does. The lesson for kids everywhere is “don’t end up being that kid.” It’s hard to feel too sorry for this dimwit. He did a stupid thing for an incredibly stupid reason (not getting to be part of the homecoming court? If that’s really important to you, you need to get a life) and so he got to be “that kid.” And no, “most teenagers” DON’T make such terrible decisions. Most of them are smart enough to know better. I sympathize when completely innocent kids run afoul of ZT rules, but this kid knew he could–and probably would–get in trouble and he did it anyway. Yeah the punishment’s over the top, but don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Bill,
I think the point to keep in mind is he didn’t do the crime. Running across a football field in your jockeys is sexual harassment just like a folded piece of paper is a replica firearm. Running into a person by accident (even when it’s completely your fault because you were being stupid) is assault in the same manner that picking a friend up from a party is alcoholic consumption.
It is very hard to be sympathetic to this student. He obviously attends a pretty rich high school in the “burbs”.
Let him try that at a rough, tough, low IQ school in south central LA.
Would he live to tell about it?
I’m not sure I follow you, David. It’s okay to falsely accuse and unfairly punish a kid because he lives in the suburbs?
*sigh*
In my backyard, too. I knew the NC public school system was run by idiots, but I didn’t think we had gotten that bad.
It’s not like the kid got into a fight or smuggled illicit drugs onto school grounds. He just ran across the field in his underwear. He didn’t hurt anyone (except the teacher’s pride). Yet… he needs to be made an “example” of?
Since when did “discipline” become more important than “educating?”
What happens if you run across an NFL football field in your breifs and bowl someone over while you’re hyped up on adreneline?
Apples and oranges Jafo. Again.
Even so, I doubt they would go after you for sexual harrassment.
Apples and oranges?
How do you figure? (again.)
Streaking at a football game is streaking at a football game.
They’d nail you foe lewd and lacivious behavior.
The typical charge, if any, for a spectator entering a playing field and disupting a game is “disorderly conduct.” Streaking (which this kid was NOT doing) may, depending on local ordinances, result in a misdeamonor public indecency or “indecent exposure” charge. Note that streaking, though, has become a “retro” tradition, in several college towns, involving several hundred streakers, who don’t seem to ever be arrested.
Sexual assault, or harrassment, which requires intent to assault or harrass a specific person, is a much more severe charge, and I seriously doubt the NFL, NBA, or MLB, etc., have ever pressed that far against any of their fans, i.e., customers. In my cursory research, all they seem to do is escort the fan out of the game, and don’t follow-up with pressing charges.
The assault charges just won’t hold up in court for this kid. Whether the school, though, will follow the court’s direction is a different story.
UP
“School officials said new information about the incident and the student came to light over the past six weeks, which prompted a re-evaluation of the original punishment.”
Thank you Jim … Again you and this excellent site were probably factors in this kid’s reinstatement. You do important work in bringing such disciplinary abuses out to the light of day.
I would be willing to bet that the Speedo swim suits the HS swim team wears covers less than his underwear does. Shouldn’t they all be thrown out for group sexual display or harassment?
I’d be willing to bet some of the cheer leader routines are a bit suggestive also.
JAFO - You keep trying to support your arguments by refering to unrelated hypothetical comparisons. The first time was regarding a toy gun on a bus (apple). Your orange was an unsubstantiated report of threatening. This time the apple was a student at a school function. Your orange was a private institution with no direct authority over the subject.
Mary - Thankyou. I’m sure the newpaper article was the catalyst but I’m happy to help spread the word as best I can.
So happy for this student and his family. Hopefully he has a lesson, albeit, the hard way. I think we need to focus more on teaching the kids a lesson and less on expelling them from school and excluding them from a good education. Kids will screw up. But to me unless they truly are endagering other studetns and staff or are pushing drugs in school, we ought to find other means for punishment then expulsion. We had 20 expulsions in our local school district in 14 months. There are 400 kids in our high school and about 400 in the middle school. Some were for possession of tylenol, midol, one was a 6th grader squirting her friend with her asthma inhaler in class. Stupid, you bet, but Expulsion for an 11 year old??? Is that the best we can do in these cases?? We had three students who were expelled for suspected pot use on a Washington DC school trip. Do I condone the behavior?? Absolutely not. Do we have to expel them for a school year because of it, NO!!!! These were AP and honors students who were put in an alternative ed class that could not offer them the courses they needed. One withdrew and went to the local community college and got his credits towards graduation that way. Thankfully he had very supportive parents and friends who saw him through his depression, thoughts of suicide, etc. I think we can do better then this. Throwing them out of the building and not providing them a good education doesn’t solve a thing. These are not gang member kids carrying guns and knives and pushing drugs in the school. These are “teenagers” making bad decisions as most of all of us did ourselves. We need to gather together to come up with alternatives to expulsion for “infractions” that don’t require expulsion by law…..(possession of weapons and distribution of drugs)
Deb
So, did they also drop the charges?
There was no mention of criminal charges being filed. As to his scholastic record, the new article doesn’t say if the sexual harassment and assault will be removed. Hopefully his parents will stick to their guns until that is corrected.
Deb makes a good point when she says “These are not gang member kids carrying guns and knives and pushing drugs in the school.”
I would bet huge dollars if they WERE gang members NOTHING would happen. Suddenly common sense would take hold when the decision makers realize they may be held accountable for their stupid actions.
Jim,
If there was any kind of unsubstantiated threat or information that could not be confirmed, do you think the press would report it, especially if it flys in the face of making their hero look less innocent?
My point was, and still is, valid. You get a skewed story when you read the articles in the paper.
If YOU were the principal and had darn good reason to do what you did, you too would be painted in a horrible light by the press.
That’s just apples and apples.
The fact of the matter is that you aren’t in the office when these decisions are made. You don’t have the background of the kid in the detail that the administors do. What you have is half a story. We’ve seen time and time again on this site people who were there chiming in with details not in the story that puts things in a very different light.
If you had kids and came upon them seeing one with a black eye blaming his brother but his brother denies it, do you just say ‘must be true’ since you didn’t see it? Or, as a parent, would you possibly take some diciplinary action? In the scenario above, the press would nail you for passing punishment down on an innocent kid who was only defending himself and never threw a punch.
Truth is only as true as the folks who read it and beleive it to be so.
JAFO, there you go again with the “press is out to get us” persecution complex. A rather unsubstantiated feeling, I say. Journalists do, of course, feel they have am important role in a free society as the “Fourth Estate”, so naturally they go after anything they see as an abuse of power. Not that the kid was a “hero”, it’s just that some authority figure was going overboard with his authority.
Your point seems to be that “we don’t know the whole story, so we can’t comment on it.” If that were true, almost all political discourse would come to a standstill. Folks in the North wouldn’t have been able to comment on the injustices of school segregation back in the 1960s, the unfairness of Jim Crow laws, etc., etc., because they “weren’t directly there, to see both sides of the story”. Doesn’t hold water.
The press, and the public, have the right to throw the limelight on any public figure’s decision-making. The leader can then try to hide behind “confidentiality” and such, and thus not try to share information that allows anyone to make an informed decision; but once this information (or lack thereof) is revealed and their accusations don’t hold water (and in this kid’s case, that’s all it was: the press reported, “The school has accused him of assaulting …”. They never pressed charges. They just brought up the maximum felony they could find in the books to threaten him with, and thus hope to gain compliance from the kid and his parents for their “more lenient” decision of a one year’s suspension), and they and their legal counsel find there’s nothing to substantiate their level of charges, of course they have to back down.
Bravo to this kid, and his parents, for being vocal and going to the press. That was the right move for them, and his future.
In the past I might have agreed with JAFO, I would have though there must have been SOMETHING else this kid did to get such a punishment - right? After my own experience dealing with people in such positions of authority with my own son I realize this is NOT a world that makes a lot of sense. There is so much discretion that school adminstrators have they can construe things as they wish and sometimes for petty reasons. And their reasons do not have to be argued see light of day of a court and a trained judge. If the kid did in fact do SOMETHING else that would justify this extreme a punishment then why wasn’t he punished for that? Because there isn’t enough evidence? This isn’t about 2 kids being punished and sent to bed early - this is about a kid’s academic career at a time when things really count. And these school districts have the audacity to take the tax dollars allocated for your child’s education - instead give the kid an all-day study hall at best at less than half the cost- and all this gets done without any real hearing. Hell most don’t even have a definable judicial process. Rules are made up as they go along. Take our kid’s education away - then give the parents the money - as I said before - then this crap will stop.
Bravo, Kevin and Mary…
So, if you greive these injustices, what have you done to stop them?
“So, if you grieve these injustices, what have you done to stop them?”
As I mentioned before, among other things, I’ve testified at hearings at our state legislature in favor of specific bills regarding school discipline. Many of these have passed, and law are law in Texas. They all serve, hopefully, to provide some more checks and balances into the system, and some reasonableness.
This all boils down to one thing. “Absolute power corrupts absolutly”. These administrators don’t have to answer to anyone. They have absolute power over their domain. I agree that suspensions and expulsions are in certain cases needed, but I don’t feel that any one person should have the power to hand them out arbitrarily. There should be a review group consisting of parents, school board members and administrators who decide the final disposition.
In this case the review board was three teachers. All answered to the principal and two were placed on the review board directly by him.
Just to clarify something about the underwear streaker - there were no formal criminal charges - there were 3 school policy violations:
Assault on an adult
Sexual activity
Sexual harassment
Jim, it’s not that power, whether absolute or not corrupts. It doesn’t. The problem is that power tends to be irresistably attractive to people who are easily corrupted.
Hate to break the thread on power, but I had to respond to David Ricardo’s assumption that Dylan Mangum goes to some rich high school in the ‘burbs. I couldn’t disagree more with that assumption. I live in Wake County, only about 10 miles from the school. WF-R High is a fairly rural school in, what, admittedly, is becoming a suburban/metropolitan area. Still, it’s no where near the burbs. Also it’s not rich. The county schools use an extensive busing program that equally (ha!) distributes students so each school will have a balance of all “socio-economic” levels. Basically, what it comes down to is they don’t want any “failing” schools (based on standardized testing), so they spread the low-achievers around. They just can’t say that out loud; it’s not polite.