When I was going to school in my small hometown of Gary, SD, we did not have a school counselor. This fact may have led me to the path of becoming a school counselor, but truth be told, that was "only the half of it". I was the current Junior Class President and went from being crowned Freshman Sweetheart Queen to feeling like a leper no one wanted to sit next to at lunch. For two weeks, no one would sit with me at lunch, not even my boyfriend who I would later marry. I went through an "isolation" situation that left me feeling defeated, frustrated and quite literally, lonely. Here is what happened.
Our town was embroiled in a battle of a potential school consolidation due to low numbers of students in attendance. I attended one town hall meeting held in our Gary Tigers high school gymnasium where I was representing the junior class along with several other classmates of mine both in my grade, and also younger and older than myself and my peers. Things began to get ugly and at one point, my father was asked to "step outside and handle it man-to-man". He didn't step outside and oblige the angry mob mentality thankfully. It doesn't matter the position my father took, it does matter on how adults chose to handle their disagreements and what happened next.
My classmates and I discussed how writing a letter would be an awesome way to convey how we, as students were feeling...what better class to hear from than the potential first class who would not get to graduate from Gary High School? My classmate P.M. wrote a superb petition on why we should keep the school open...everything was so well-written except one paragraph...about the School Board President. The School Board President was my 2nd cousin whom I babysat for every other weekend. The paragraph in question was one, tiny paragraph that didn't speak well of the School Board President. I didn't want the school to close, it meant losing the $750 Valedictorian Scholarship I was supposed to get at SDSU, but I couldn't sign the petition and openly disrespect a relative of mine. I felt stuck but I stood by my decision not to sign something that would hurt a relative of mine.
The petition was published without my name on it but I didn't think too much of it because the writer's own brother hadn't signed it, so my name not appearing would surely not be a big deal, right? WRONG! Somehow the paper thought me not signing it would be a great story. They called to do an interview with me on "Why did the Junior Class President, 'A' student, and varsity basketball player not sign the petition?" My simple answer was, "I believe in the petition...but the one, negative paragraph about the Board President is why I couldn't sign it." Do you think that is what the paper printed? Heck no! They twisted my words when they found out I was bummed about not having enough girls for a JV basketball team and we could only play varsity games. Even though I had been on varsity as an 8th grader and a starter as a 9th grader, that still didn't lessen the sadness of not getting recognized as a varsity player (Varsity Recognition = the walk down after the half-time of the JV game to go get dressed for VARSITY) or worse yet, having our scheduled cut to shreds because other towns needed/wanted to play teams that had both JV and Varsity. I was sad! Who wouldn't be? Sports were my life back then.
Word got out to other towns that I didn't sign the petition. The Homecoming King from the MN school across the border who I had once dated, told me I was being called a "traitor" from people I believed were "friends" of mine. No one would sit next to me in the lunchroom for almost two weeks, not even my then boyfriend, who I would later marry. I was Miserable! I wanted to write a retraction letter to negate the article the newspaper owners wrote about my reasons for not signing and to ask why the heck they didn't interview the brother of the petition writer, but my parents would not allow it. They thought it better to say nothing more and that it would die down...boy, to this day I do not agree with that decision to do nothing. I do believe this experience happened for a reason, something I came to understand years later. I also believe that sometimes you are given struggles so that you can do good for others later on. It wouldn't be until my 2nd year ever as a school counselor--almost 8 years after my junior year of high school when the first case of AIDS in a SD school came to the small school that I was a school counselor at--that I would understand the impact of my prior struggle and what it could mean for student C.H. and the interview he was about to endure with the SAME newspaper editor...
Stay tuned for information on that story in an upcoming blog post.
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