School taking steps to avoid incident repeat

CLINTONVILLE — It only took 45 seconds for an incident to take place that will take the Clintonville School District considerably longer to dig its way out of.

Four Clintonville High School students diverted from a planned dance for a lunchtime dance-off last week for homecoming and instead engaged in a mock Native American dance with traditional drum circle music playing. The 45 seconds of video set off a social media frenzy and led to the cancellation or postponement of the remaining homecoming activities.

Thus far, the district has sent out two written statements apologizing for the incident, assuring people that the mocking dance is not indicative of the overall cultural atmosphere for Clintonville’s public schools and saying it is working with officials to prevent such an incident from taking place again.

Superintendent David Dyb took it a step further Tuesday by speaking with the Leader about the before and after of the lunchtime activity on Oct. 3, the part that the video didn’t cover, as well as what the district does to promote cultural diversity.

The lunchtime dance-off was supposed to be a competition between the four grades, according to Dyb. The dances were submitted in advance to make sure nothing was inappropriate about the dancing.

“At the last possible moment, a group of young men — students — slipped in an unauthorized music and changed their routine without anybody knowing about it, and without any staff member’s permission,” Dyb said. “It doesn’t matter if it was two seconds or 30 seconds, it was too long.”

As soon as the dance took place, the students involved were immediately directed to the main office. Dyb said administrators told all of its students were told how inappropriate the dance was, and that it should not be shared outside the school.

The next day, the video was posted, and angry phone calls and messages came swarming in, according to Dyb, as social media sites retransmitted the video — sometimes several times on certain chat pages.

“Just before nine o’clock, we were told this video was going viral,” Dyb said, noting he was heading out of Clintonville to a meeting outside the district, but he turned around immediately to take charge of the situation.

Dyb said he gathered the administrators, contacted the board president, Ben Huber, about the matter and crafted a response to address the situation. Part of that response was canceling the homecoming parade and football game and postponing the homecoming dance to an as-yet undetermined date.

Dyb said canceling the remaining homecoming activities was not “collective punishment” for the students but more of a precautionary measure. Some of the social media posts administrators and staff were seeing Oct. 4 indicated people could come to Clintonville and cause problems at the parade and the football game.

“We saw some posts that were very concerning, and that led us to contact the police department and bring them in on the conversation regarding the nature of some of the posts,” Dyb said, noting such steps are common protocol when messages of a threatening nature are received. “As soon as something is posted on social media, it grows and grows, and you can’t stop it.”

Dyb said, despite media reports at the time, the cancellations did not come out of fear of protesters.

“I didn’t feel that the protesting was going to cause any type of concern, because the police said they would have a presence if anything were to happen,” Dyb said. “We made the decision before we even knew about the protesting.”

There are some short-term things the district is doing to curtail such incidents from happening again, Dyb said. Until now, students were allowed to coordinate the music during activities, but that will no longer be the case because of what happened.

In the long term, the district is reviewing its existing cultural diversity activities to see if things should be changed or added in order to educate students that mocking Native American traditions and spiritual beliefs can be offensive. Among the areas being examined are how well the district complies with Wisconsin Act 31, the law requiring schools teach about the state’s 11 tribal nations.

The high school has a cultural diversity day every March, Dyb said, and guest speakers are brought in to speak about different cultures and ways of life. He said it would be likely that the 2020 event would include more of an emphasis on Native Americans.

“We need to do a better job of telling our story — that we do take diversity to be an important part of education, as well as cultural awareness,” Dyb said.

Dyb also hinted at the possibility of having some cultural awareness activities in November, known nationwide as Native American Heritage Month. He said the district has received an outpouring of support for such activities from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, area tribes and more.

Dyb said that all of the efforts won’t mean a thing if they don’t prevent offensive behaviors from taking place again.

“All the good things we’ve done every year in relationship to teaching about diversity and inclusion, at this time, go silent,” Dyb said. “We don’t want this to be something that the community is branded with.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com