The Kitchener-Waterloo Record in Ontario, Canada ran a recent expose about sex and high school. (Maybe they're interested in writing about this crazy "toothing" trend?) At the heart of the story -- not to mention in the lead -- was the re-telling of an incident when a "...Grade 9 girl was discovered giving oral sex to a Grade 12 boy in a washroom during a student dance." Excerpts of the article are below (emphasis ours). And under those excerpts is the text of a follow up story that exposed this salacious tale to be false. Looks like the paper took a locker room rumor and played it as fact. That's, like, shameful,
The original article (April 18, 2005):
Long, passionate kisses in the school cafeteria. Classroom aisles blocked by teens holding hands in class. Or how about a teen couple caught having oral sex in a washroom during a school dance?
High schools are places where the emotional intensity and growing sexuality of teenage relationships have to be balanced against a sense of what's proper in a place of learning.
...In every school, there are times and places where the physical becomes uncomfortably intense.
Baker, a student trustee on the Waterloo Region District School Board and a member of Cameron Heights' student council, said a Grade 9 girl was discovered giving oral sex to a Grade 12 boy in a washroom during a student dance a few months ago.
She was there when some of her co-councillors discovered the tryst and reported it to teachers.
The follow up (April 25, 2005; written by the same reporter):
High school gossip can spread faster than the most aggressive computer virus.
And no one knows this better than students, staff and teachers at Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute in Kitchener. (EDITOR'S NOTE: And your readers.)
It was a Friday night last fall, the first dance of the school year. There was plenty of supervision, both by teachers and senior students. One female teacher stationed in front of a men's washroom saw a girl follow a boy into the washroom.
According to Cameron Heights principal Kelly Kempel, the teacher who saw the girl immediately told the girl to get out.
Student Rachael Baker, who is on the student council, was helping to organize and supervise the dance. She wasn't right by the washroom and didn't see the teacher confront the girl, but she heard other teens gathering and talking about it.
By the end of that evening, the gossip had evolved into a story that a girl had been caught in the washroom performing oral sex on a male student.
It wasn't true, but "a lot of people were talking about it, at the dance and afterwards," Baker said.
"I and other students in the school were under the impression that it had happened."
It was talked about for a few days and then, as is the way of gossip, it faded as a topic of conversation.
Then, months later, a Record reporter called Baker, who is also one of two young trustees representing students' concerns at the Waterloo Region District School Board. The reporter (EDITOR'S NOTE: Don't you mean "this reporter"?) was working on an article about sexual behaviour in high schools, what was permitted and what was not, and asked what Baker thought.
Baker repeated the story about oral sex in the washroom, believing it was true.
When The Record included the incident in a story on this page last Monday, principal Kelly Kempel was quick to point out that it hadn't happened.
Not only did the story hurt student and staff pride in the school, but it was also hurtful to the individuals being talked about, Kempel said.
She said the teacher had intervened before anything could happen in the washroom.
Moreover, there was no record of disciplinary action being taken, which would have followed if the students were caught in sexual activity.
"It's important for us to learn that anyone and everyone can be hurt by gossip," Kempel said. "Those who are sharing in it may be inadvertently causing hurt."
Now, after hours of talking with Kempel, Baker believes the story was inaccurate. "I had my facts wrong," she said.
If only the paper would follow this high school student's example and simply admit it had its facts wrong.
