An 11-year-old boy was punished this month for reporting a classmate for having a bullet at school because, according to administrators, he waited too long to do so.
News of the boy’s punishment led last week to threats of violence against St. John’s, a two-day closure of the Catholic school and the arrest of a man in North Carolina accused of making the threats, all while administrators tried to reassure parents who might find the whirlwind “deeply unsettling.”
School officials defended the punishment, saying they held the boy accountable for the kind of delay in reporting that could have catastrophic consequences, citing the recent school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., that left four people dead and nine injured. Anderson contended that punishing the boy for “doing the right thing” makes the school less safe by disincentivizing students from coming forward.
“The message it sends is, instead of ‘See something, say something,’ the kids are better off not saying anything,” Anderson said, adding that “it’s creating a more dangerous environment.”
The Catholic Diocese of Richmond, of which St. John’s is a part, defended punishing the boy.
“The school’s culture of safety requires that students and adults alike report potential threats as quickly as they are made aware of them; in a real emergency, gaps in reporting time — especially hours-long gaps — could have major consequences for school safety,” the diocese said in a statement.
On the morning of Sept. 5, Wigand’s son’s class prepared to take a standardized test by moving desks into a different formation, Anderson said, and while doing so, a classmate showed him a bullet. Wigand said the other boy was showing it off after finding it in his parents’ coin jar, and her son didn’t perceive it as a threat.
Even though he was shocked, he decided to wait until he could report the bullet anonymously, Wigand said. So he took the standardized math test for the next 1½ hours, then attended an art class which the boy with the bullet was also taking.
A fire drill followed, during which Wigand’s son went to interim principal Jennifer Davey to tell her about the bullet, Anderson said. Police came to the school, searched the other boy’s bag and found it, he added.
The principal commended Wigan’s son but also told him he was being suspended for 1½ days because he hadn’t made the report immediately, Anderson said. The other boy was suspended for the same amount of time, he added.
Wigand said that when her son had told her why he had been suspended, she suspected he wasn’t telling her everything and interrogated him.
“There’s no way somebody would suspend you for reporting something,” she said, describing her reaction at the time. “I couldn’t believe it.”
But Wigand confirmed what her son had told her when she spoke to the principal that night at a school open house. She reviewed the student handbook, found nothing about a requirement to report anything other than sexual harassment and pointed that out to school officials, Anderson said. The principal was nevertheless “adamant” that Wigand’s son be punished, the lawyer said.
On Sept. 6, a day after the bullet was found, Wigand contacted Anderson, who that afternoon emailed Superintendent Michael Riley, Davey and other Catholic and school officials a letter saying what had happened to the boy was “100% wrong” and threatening legal action if the school didn’t reverse itself.
On Sept. 9, a lawyer representing the diocese replied saying school officials would not budge. The boy could have told his teachers during the test or in art class but waited to report what he had seen, potentially putting himself, his classmates and his teachers in danger, the diocese lawyer wrote.
“Failure to report a safety concern affects the safety of everyone in the school,” diocese lawyer Leslie Winneberger wrote in a letter obtained by The Washington Post. “… The school cannot, and will not, take chances when it comes to student safety, especially true in light of the school shooting in Georgia this past week.”
St. John’s closed Thursday and Friday after the school received an email threatening violence because Wigand’s son had been disciplined. On Friday, law enforcement arrested a man in North Carolina who is accused of making those threats. St. John’s is temporarily hiring private security to patrol the school, Riley told parents Friday.
Wigand, who has been a law enforcement officer for 21 years, said she has repeatedly tried to talk to school administrators about removing the suspension from her son’s disciplinary record and training students on how to report a possible threat beyond “See something, say something.” She said she hasn’t gotten a response to her phone calls and emails.
If the school doesn’t budge, Anderson said, Wigand plans to sue.
Wigand said her son waited because he wanted to make the report anonymously to avoid being bullied. Because he and the boy with the bullet disappeared from class at the same time and served their suspension the next day, students deduced that her son was the one who told the school.
“He’s upset, because one of the things he didn’t want was to be bullied and didn’t want to be labeled a ‘snitch,’” Wigand said, “and the school took all that away from him.” Everybody at the school knows her son reported the other boy, so he has to take ownership of that, she said. She told him to tell others he did the right thing and would do it again while encouraging others to do the same.
“I told him to stay strong and he did right. Let others know, if you see something that’s unsafe, you need to report it.” Wigand said. “Hold true to his belief that he did the right thing.”
