Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [96]
“My husband and I and Billy’s grandmother were all sitting in the stands waiting for Billy to walk across the stage, waiting for his name to be called. They called the entire class and never called Billy’s name. We couldn’t see him sitting with the rest of you. We didn’t understand. We were confused. And then we got worried. Where was he? We got up and looked everywhere for him. We went out to the parking lot and to our car. And that’s where we found him.”
She began to cry.
“There, in the backseat, was Billy, all curled up in a ball, and crying. He told us what Mr. Ryan had done.
“We can’t believe this happened. He was wearing a tie! Why did this happen?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Spitz,” I said quietly.
“Were you there?” she asked me.
“Yes.”
“Did you see Mr. Ryan do this?”
“Yes.”
“And you did nothing?”
“I was still a student.” And a coward.
“You were also a school board member! Isn’t there anything you can do about this?”
Of course, there was nothing I could do. They weren’t going to hold graduation over to correct this injustice. I had a chance, maybe, to do something about it the night before. But I didn’t. I would never forget this small but powerful moment of my silence and looking the other way. I promised her I would not let this rest and that, as I said when I ran for election, I would work toward Mr. Ryan’s removal.
Two days later I was told to go to the home of the school board secretary and be sworn in. I rode my bicycle over to her house in my bare feet and was sworn in without my shoes on. She said, “Where are your shoes?”
“I’m not wearing any,” I said. She just glared at my feet.
I raised my right hand, and when it came time to say the words about “defending the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” I added, “especially domestic.” She looked at me and rolled her eyes. She had taught my mother in high school. “She was maybe the worst teacher I had,” my mother told me later. Mom also told me I should have worn some shoes.
The honeymoon period in my first year on the board of education was longer than any of us had expected. Most of the motions I made to improve the schools—including establishing some student rights—were passed. The board listened to what I had to say about how the high school was being run, and how the assistant principal might do better being on the police force (in Chile). I said that the principal was not a forward thinker; he stifled dissent and created a climate where new ideas were not encouraged. In my first year I became a conduit to the board for students, teachers, and parents so that their voices could be heard.
One Monday night about eight months into my term, the superintendent presented “letters of resignation” from the high school principal—and Assistant Principal for Discipline, Dennis Ryan. I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that, just ten months after I was beaten with a high-velocity wooden board, the mission I went on by running for the school board had actually been accomplished. It caught me by surprise, as I did not think they were really going to do anything about this problem. True, they were not going to publicly fire them. They let them resign, to save face. Saving face was not yet something I was interested in, as I was not yet old enough to have the necessary compassion and mercy for two men who were just in the wrong job—and had a right to be treated with dignity and respect, even if one of them had not accorded the same to me and Billy Spitz and others. So to twist the knife in deeper, I asked the superintendent at the public meeting if the principal and assistant principal had made this decision on their own or did he, the superintendent, ask for these letters? He nodded his head quietly and said simply, “The latter.”
The next day, the students in the high school couldn’t believe that one of their own actually got to say “You’re fired!” to the principal and assistant principal. We started thinking—what else can we do?
That