Before You Ring the Bell

Workplace politics make it challenging to report a colleague/co-worker for any suspicious behavior and/or suspected wrong-doing, especially if the colleague/co-worker is an accomplished liar. My personal ethics require me to go to the mat to right what is wrong, but I learned over a lifetime that there are far more protections for the wrong-doer than for the reporter. Reporting can cost the reporter not just the job, but put him/her on the receiving end of a spotlight that taints an entire career.

Joe Paterno has been fired for doing what he most likely was required to do: report an alleged crime to school personnel. Had he dialed 9-1-1 as many suggest he should have done, he may have been fired on the spot from the fall-out of his accusations based solely on alleged victim's statements years after the fact. Instead, he followed protocol and is now fired for reporting alleged crimes up the chain of command. Do or don't do and the result is the same: the alleged perpetrators have all the protections of the law, while anyone standing between them and the alleged victims are fair game to be dragged into the fray.

During my career, I submitted written allegations against colleagues for conduct unbecoming, unprofessional, and illegal. My actions gained me a negative reputation, and one administrator told me I was a trouble-maker and to mind my own business. After vicious rumors spread like wildfire about me, including that I was having sex with both students and colleagues in an office next to my classroom during lunch, an accusation that any one of the dozen or so students in my classroom with me during that time would have refuted, I decided to keep my mouth shut and relocated to another worksite.

Message sent and received: henceforth, I minded my own business to the best of my ability.

A specific instance of physical abuse against a child got me into even hotter water when the male student arrived at class with what looked like evidence of a fierce fist-fight. When I asked him what had happened, he told me that he and his father had gotten into it -- and he came out on the losing side of the argument. As a mandated reporter, I reported to Social Services; later that day, I was called into an administrator's office to join the admin, a deputy, the student, and his father. End result: the father told me to mind my own damned business because his "boy" is 18 years old, old enough to serve his country and to be a man, and if he couldn't take a punch, he was no son of his.

Message sent and received: henceforth, I minded my own business to the best of my ability.

A colleague was accused of providing drugs and engaging in a homosexual relationship with a student. I knew nothing except after the fact, refused to discuss what I thought I knew, and received a subpoena to testify in the trial. I stated that the male student fantasized constantly about his homosexuality, sharing wild stories about this person and that, but that I had NO SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE of anything involving this student and this teacher, which was the truth. The male teacher was found not guilty of all allegations except providing pot to the student, but my reputation was trashed with innuendo by the prosecutor that the male teacher and I were involved in a sexual relationship and I was covering for him. The fact that the alleged sexual activity at the core of the trial was homosexual did not factor into the accusations: trashing me somehow proved that the allegations against a colleague were somehow true.

Message sent and received: henceforth, I minded my own business to the best of my ability.

No bell can be unrung, so it's difficult to decide whether to pull the rope or walk away. If I don't know from first-hand involvement, I walk away because I've learned my lessons the hard way: all people lie, cheat and steal to advance their own agenda and will gladly and forcefully throw anyone under the bus to save their own ass. And, young people also lie, cheat and steal to advance their own agenda. Young people live in a fantasy world wherein they create tangled scenarios that involve unsuspecting people in sometimes shocking situations; before the truth can be unwound, the people unwittingly involved in these fantasies can be dragged into situations about which they either knew nothing or participated peripherally.

Are the adults always innocent? No, of course not -- but is Justin Beiber the father of a baby or is it just another sick girl's fantasy being played out on a very public stage? Were any of the college athletes accused of a gang rape of an alleged prostitute ever found guilty? No, the charges were dropped -- finally -- as unfounded. We rush to judgment based on our own emotional agenda, rather than waiting to let the truth come to the surface of all the media mudslinging.

Unfortunately, both Joe Paterno and the President of Penn State, as well as others caught in the shoulda, woulda, coulda now share my knowledge at the expense of their careers, as well as their personal and professional reputations. They have no protection of the courts, but the persons accused of the actual crimes can take the heat off themselves by fanning the fires that consume other lives. I'm not sure how justice is served by firing Paterno and the President, but I do know how it puts the spotlight on the mandated reporters' alleged failure to do ... something, rather than on the alleged perpetrators of an alleged crime.

By the time justice may be served, it will be far too late on far too many levels for far too many people.