Many school administrators have a strange, disembodied dialect. They parry criticism of bad students with nebulous references to ponderous committees and prophylactic "dialogue." Equally averse to bad publicity and rigorous debate, they are easy and fun to mock.

Those who care about education — and the future of the republic — might fret that officials' fuzziness will spread to the kids. Fortunately, the disease seems confined largely to the schools' front offices. Many students are capable of and willing to engage in reasoned discourse.

Consider the wake of the sentencing of Cara Stengel, an 18-year-old Boulder High student who harassed, intimidated and ultimately assaulted a 14-year-old girl. Last November, the victim was taken to Boulder Reservoir by an older student, Jason Poole, and others.

At the reservoir, the assailant, Cara Stengel appeared; she threw juice on the victim, shoved her down and pummeled her. While the victim lay on the ground bleeding, Stengel kicked her in the back, one witness testified.

No one helped the victim, but someone videotaped the attack.

Stengel pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and is now serving a 30-day jail sentence that allows her time off to go to school. Last week, Poole pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge. Evidence indicates that the attack resulted from a conspiracy of dunces.

Two weeks ago, this column reiterated the anguished questions of a local judge who wondered why older kids harassed and attacked younger kids, then stood by without helping while the victim was beaten up. Several people, some of them students, wrongly interpreted the comments as an indictment of the whole school.

Shortly thereafter, BHS Principal Ron Cabrera and assistant superintendent Chris King darkened the Camera's door. With a PR expert in tow, they came to defend their school's sacred honor.

All attempts to disabuse King and Cabrera of their logical leaps and faulty assumptions were destined to fail. When pressed about his loose use of terms such as "fight" rather than "assault," Cabrera said, "I don't want to talk semantics." Looking unusually grim, King insisted that his shaky inferences were correct, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

The administrators' response was a bloviated version of, "We're right because we say we are." Uh, touch.

It was, therefore, a relative delight to debate the same points with a classroom full of Boulder High students last week. Some of the students held views similar to those of the administrators. But there was a key difference: The kids actually tackled the hard work of debating facts and dissecting implications. They got specific, defined their terms, corroborated their arguments.

In the end, they not only argued but also demonstrated that small pockets of hooliganism don't define an entire population. They also seemed to understand that this point was never really in dispute.

In spite of the example set by the administration, many of these kids are prepared for life in the participatory sport we call democracy. This is a hopeful footnote to a dreadful tale.

Reach Clint Talbott at (303) 473-1367 or talbottc@thedailycamera.com.

April 30, 2002

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