Before I start my rant, let me just say that Senior Day was actually pretty fun. Team bonding was a nice throwback to middle school gym class, and Mrs. Reyes effectively de-stressed every single person in the cafeteria freaking out about Naviance and the Common Application.
My qualm? The social media talk, or, as I like to call it, the “let’s blame girls for sexting” talk.
It began with the extreme cases of sexual offenses from technology, talking about how a 15 year old girl sent out another girl’s nudes as a form of revenge, was found guilty and registered as a sex offender as a teenager. What’s the lesson? Don’t betray another girl over a boy while committing a felony in the process.
I actually didn’t have an issue with that. I love hearing true crime cases of morons and I’m a big fan of justice being served so that was emotionally satisfying. But the talk moved on from extreme cases to every day cases.
Which, apparently, are the fault of girls. Only girls.
“He spent the entire time talking about the fault of girls in the nudes issue and he didn’t talk about the fault of guys once,” Sam Steger said. “He said, ‘Girls like to get on the internet and create drama.”
“He started by saying that 85% of the cases he deals with involve girls starting drama with each other,” Annie Parnell said.
Office J.A. Conway Jr. was wrong. In my experience as a high school girl (and my friends who are high schoolers), the reality that Officer Conway created is simply not the one I experience. Honestly, sexting happens from both boys and girls, and both genders have equal blame in the wrongdoing.
“He was sexist because he didn’t say anything about it being the guy’s fault,” said Grinden Collins. “It was nothing about how the guys started anything.”
But playing the blame game is reductive. The session was titled “Social Media,” and yet, a grand total of five minutes were spent telling us not to post pictures at parties or with alcohol or illegal substances.
Our athletic handbook places a lot of weight on how athletes use social media and presents a variety of consequences for a misuse of Instagram, Twitter, VSCO, and more. If this is what our school cares about, why was more time not spent talking about rules and regulations?
Furthermore, all Mason students were already put through the awkward “don’t send nudes” talk at the beginning of the year from Officer Gagnon at the class conversations. The message was loud and clear and delivered by an actual member of our school’s community, as opposed to an officer we don’t know from Prince William County.
I understand the goal is to have students not commit felonies, and I respect that. But blaming girls for sexting and not even spending considerable time talking about social media was unacceptable and frankly, disrespectful to every girl in this building.
Officer Conway declined to comment.
