Trent Gibson
The Signal
You are a high school English teacher. You enter your classroom like any other day, preparing to teach. You suddenly notice your students are staring at you, pointing and snickering. Come to find out, you are the center of a rumor around school that you are performing sexual acts with one of your students.
Of course, this isn’t true. But your students believe it is.
This scenario is a replication of a situation that my ex-girlfriend is currently involved in at the high school where she teaches.
So what do you do? Go to the principal – he’s no help.
“Boys will be boys,” he says.
Call the authorities? Strike two.
“We don’t have enough evidence,” they say.
You are now struggling to make it through your days without crying in your car on your lunch break or hearing “maybe she’ll give me an A, if you know what I mean.”
“Victim blame” is a term coined to represent when “the victim(s) of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment are held entirely or partially responsible for the transgressions committed against them.”
Victim blame has been occurring for years, but this actually hits close to home. Amidst the controversy, the students at my ex-girlfriend’s school decided to get social media involved by tweeting from their personal Twitter accounts, as well as reposting others’ tweets.
Now this brings in a whole new subject matter that we won’t get into, but let’s just say that the law now has the authority to get involved – and they have. Students can be held responsible for libelous statements made online, which can ruin their future.
What these students do not understand is that things like this can ruin a teacher’s career as well. The situation my ex-girlfriend has been unwillingly involved in has tarnished her reputation and will follow her to every school she teaches at in the future.
Regardless, certain questions arise: Are the students just bored? Are they begging for attention? Do they think it’s funny? Or do they just have malicious intent toward the sweetest girl on the planet because she gave a student an ‘F’ on a paper when he didn’t even do the assignment?
Who knows.
It is important for real victims, like my ex-girlfriend, to be believed, as the outcome can be extremely harmful to their reputations. When situations such as this one arise, we need to understand that these victims aren’t just “crying wolf.”
Sometimes, we don’t think about the consequences of our actions. We believe falsities, accusations and rumors blindly, never batting an eye, and move on like nothing happened.
We’ve been taught as a society to fall in line, to conform. And when one person tells us something is true, no matter how outrageous, we feel the need to believe. But let’s face it. It’s human nature to gossip, especially when the subject matter is titillating or taboo. We want the good stuff – the guts.
There is a passage in the Bible that reads, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I encourage you to seek truth in anything that you do. You never know the full harm that spreading falsity can do to someone.
I mean, I think the world of her, but what do I know?
