CogTools - Students Use Social Media to Strike Back After Feeling Like They Got Stabbed In The Eye With a Soldering Iron

This last week, I was able to witness a beautiful thing.  My daughter had been cast as the lead (Alice) in her high school’s production of Alice in Wonderland.  Last weekend, two months of practices and rehearsals would culminate in to six performances.  Opening night was Thursday and it went fantastically.  Friday during school they were due to perform in front of 600 3^rd-5^th graders when the school made a curious decision; they cancelled the performance, put the director of the show on “Administrative Leave” and called all future performances as cancelled until they made adjustments.

The entire production with existing sets had been checked by district officials and the construction was overseen by an OSHA certified official. The school principle made the decision to suspend the teacher and the show (although initially she implied it was a district decision) due to her interpretation of the safety inspection.  She deemed the set was unsafe in its current state.  My daughter had a lengthy scene where she was suspended 20ft. in the air (in a harness, supervised by the H.S. Adventure Ed. Teacher and over crash-mats) and there were supposedly missing rails for some of the set pieces and a hydraulic lift could not be used.

After hours of late set configuration changes, the students were OK’d to perform the remaining Friday night and Saturday shows… but without their General – the director who led them in the first place.

IMMEDIATELY, starting Friday morning students went to the only place they could to fight back… they took to social media and went viral against the school’s decision.  In support of their play and their director (a drama teacher with 20 years of experience, who the year prior took the school’s theater program to win state and to perform at ThesCon), they started Facebook pages and Twittered like enraged society members vying for change.  At the same time, parents and alumni also sent numerous emails to the principal and school board in support of the teacher.  A former student even created and distributed ‘Team Neil’ buttons for parents and students to wear.

The students, with support from locals and many across the nation had succeeded in trending on Twitter and Instagram.  #TeamNeil had over 44,000 tweets.  Students conspired online to wear school spirit t-shirts (for the following Mondays pep rally,) yet they would duct tape over their mascot name and write “NEIL” in its place.  Clay Shirky would be proud, as this was a great example of technology giving students the arms available for fighting back and addressing a poor decision and a disrespectful slight on the schools theater program. 

Not too surprisingly, due to social media pressure on the school, the following Monday the school reversed their decision and brought the teacher back.  On an entertaining note, when the deposed drama teacher returned the students celebrated with #theBeardIsBack.