Tue Jan 29, 2008 5:19PM EST
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Anne Collier calls out a generational tech clash on her NetFamilyNews blog, recounting the story of Washington, D.C. area high school senior who called the home of his school district's chief operating officer when a light snowfall did not yield a desired school closing.
You can imagine how annoyed the Fairfax County Schools COO's wife was to get such a call. So much so that she called the 17-year-old's cell phone back and left an angry message, capped off with: "Get over it, kid, and go to school!"
Darned if she didn't think her message would only be heard by the "kid" and not tens of thousands of people after he posted an audio link to his Facebook page, and a friend uploaded it to YouTube.
The Washington Post reported that the senior, Devraj Kori, has apologized and regrets his actions; he also served a day's detention since he violated school rules and made the call on his cell phone from school during school hours. And the administrator has changed his phone number to an unlisted number, regrettably. "I resent frankly that I can't rely on the civility of the community to guarantee my privacy," Dean Tistadt, the COO, said.
There are lessons to be learned on both sides of this messy ordeal. Adults need to realize the line between public and private has grown very thin with lots of teens. (Though it's still a rare teen who would do what Kori did.) And kids comfortable with putting their phone conversations on the web need to know boundaries exist for a reason and that their actions can hurt other people.
LINKS: Remorse, Detention for Snow-Day Caller [Washington Post]
In Cyberspace, Everyone Can Hear You Scream [Washington Post]
Join in the discussion. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.
Really ilik2456? Either you are 7, or you should be studying English at 10:33pm instead of posting here. You have completely missed the point of this story, and this scares me to a whole new level. At this point, you should never have another off day, because you need to catch up to your own English grade level. Read a book, not blogs so you can learn grammar. The thin line between public and private is definitely blurry. I would also state that this belongs in the column of disrespect. It's running rampant, and nobody is taking responsibility for how the kids act today.
crash_davis6, this happened in america, not australia it was posted at what time it was in australia for ilik2456, and for u what should u have been doing at 9:08am instead of being on here posting a rant about someone u dont even know
it's like some kind of vicious chain flame war or somthing. calcareous_fen, you're a stupid head, heehehe. far be it from me to break the chain... p.s. wow
I could say kids will be kids but that would be justifying the boy's immature action. He might have thought it was cool to call up his COO and tell him off but actually it made him look childish when he's supposed to be a young adult. 17 years old is too old not to understand proper procedure. However, the COO's wife was not right in her message back to him. She was the adult in this situation and should have acting as such. It doesn't matter if the possibility of him posting it to a public forum like Facebook or Youtube existed, she should have handled it like the childish stunt it was instead of becoming irate.
Kid got what he deserved, he acted ignorantly and went to school anyway. What she did was wrong of course but the thing is that there are children and teens like this who complain and hope for any chance they can get to get out of school is embarrassing not only to his/her parents but also sad to his/her character. Now that I think about it: this teen needs a dead end job and the physical abuse and not the verbal slap he received. There has to be someone working the cashier, and it's not me.
i think that the superintendent of that school should have given the students a snow day,but the school that i went to only held school for four days a week, with Friday off. when we got a snow day, we had to make that day up on a Friday. i personally thought that the wife of the superintendent sounded stupid when she left that message. she just stooped herself to the kids' level by becoming angry like that. she should have called the students' parents and called them and asked them for a meeting with the kid so they could have talked about his behavior or something in that general area.
Well the kid shouldn't have called the administrator's house. The wife's return call was a decidedly weird response. There must be something going on here that isn't being mentioned. Maybe this administrator gets a lot of calls from students about trivial garbage like this. Then again, maybe the administrator doesn't call "snow days" because he would have to stay home with that wife.
Can anyone under the age of 21 speak a sentence without using the word "like". And llik2456, you SHOULD be going to school-it's your job until you get out (if you get out). And to Dory (The Mom)-your point is well taken. It's just too bad that it had to be lost on a mind preoccupied with his own little world. By the way llik2456, I'll bet if those 3 friends of yours had some social function to attend they would have had NO PROBLEM getting there on the 'icy roads'. Do yourself a favor and pay attention at school-you'll find that in a few years you'll get a lot more respect than someone who uses the work "like" every other word. stlricky
oh and about the icy roads... TAKE THE BUS!
1 Posted by llik2456 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 6:55PM EDT Report Abuse
I hate the fairfax county superintendent Every time its icy on the roads he never closes school, he has so for like the past 2 years. Seriously I kno 3 people who trashed their cars because they were in a accident driving to school while the road was clearly pretty darn frozen. Can't he give us a break? When he decides that all fcps schools are open during heavy snow, every other county near fairfax has a snow day. No fair