Jay GreesonLike many, I was less than impressed that the Hamilton County Board of Education and schools Superintendent Rick Smith allowed all of four minutes to address the public concern about the horrific rape and assault of a 15-year-old Ooltewah High School basketball player last month.
Details of the heinous assault continue to trickle in. This paper's Kendi Anderson reported the details of the police report that puts literal descriptions with the horrific scenes none of us could have imagined a month ago.
The aunt of the victim wants the accused to be tried as adults.
The news, though, does not fill the void left by the inaction of the "emergency" school board meeting.
Wednesday's embarrassment started when the board members and Smith offered up the "gag order" excuse, and we learned Thursday morning there had been no "gag order" issued by the Sevier County judge handling the case.
We surmised that this was a bad choice of words-by saying "gag order" rather than under advice of an attorney, the semantics of this are relatively meaningless.
What is not meaningless is the appearance of the school board and administration protecting themselves rather than protecting students. What is not meaningless is the casual dismissal of more than 100 people - probably representing thousands more across the county - who have questions about this nightmare. (And considering this horrific assault and sinking test scores from the fall, it seems like we are circling near the bottom of the barrel on our two most basic goals.)
What is far from meaningless is the disregard that came across from the four-minute drive-by, even if it was unintended. We know in our soul Smith cares for this county's educational system and its students.
So what could have been done differently?
How about extensively outlining the steps in place to make sure our county has an absolute and no-second-chances anti-hazing policy. School leaders perhaps could have discussed how they are going to make the Hamilton County policy against hazing far tougher than Tennessee's existing laws.
How about pulling up a chair - both Smith and school board chairman Jonathan Welch could have done this together under the watchful ears of their attorney or sheriff Jim Hammond - to answer every question from concerned citizens in attendance. Sure, a lot of those answers would have been, "We can't comment on that because of the investigation," but at least the members of the crowd who cared enough to show up Wednesday - and those they represented - would have experienced the respect of having their concerns heard.
And how about coming up with something more sincere than a couple of typed-out prepared statements that were delivered before most of the crowd arrived, each sounding like a carbon version from page 104 of "Political Sidestepping 101."
Especially when the details are this horrific - and the school board and Smith claim some of those details are overblown in the media - and we even hear from the powers that be the indescribable claim that no adults were at fault in this mess.
Say what? Are we to believe that nothing could have been done here, since no adults were at fault? Really? That's our final answer?
So if "no adults are at fault" then the school system's top officials spent the 16 days after the dreadful attack to learn two things. First, they can't comment on it. Second, if no adults are to be blamed, then this is a "kids-will-be-kids" scenario, which is completely terrifying and unacceptable for us as parents, taxpayers and human beings.
Those conclusions are so bad, maybe that explains why they needed all of four minutes to share them.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com. His "Right to the Point" column appears on A2 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jgreesontfp.