Young Citizen Demands Accountability
Hey dude, how come no snow day? Washington Post:
It started with Thursday’s snowfall, estimated at about three inches near Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke. On his lunch break, Lake Braddock senior Devraj “Dave” S. Kori, 17, used a listed home phone number to call Dean Tistadt, chief operating officer for the county system, to ask why he had not closed the schools. Kori left his name and phone number and got a message later in the day from Tistadt’s wife.
“How dare you call us at home! If you have a problem with going to school, you do not call somebody’s house and complain about it,” Candy Tistadt’s minute-long message began. At one point, she uttered the phrase “snotty-nosed little brats,” and near the end, she said, “Get over it, kid, and go to school!”
Sheesh. Chill, lady.
Kori took Tistadt’s message, left on his cellphone, and posted an audio link on a Facebook page he had created after he got home from school called “Let them know what you think about schools not being cancelled.” The Web page listed Dean Tistadt’s work and home numbers.
Well, yeah. What’d she expect?
The Tistadts received dozens more calls that day and night, Dean Tistadt said. Most were hang-ups, but at one point, they were coming every five minutes — one at 4 a.m., he said. At the same time, his wife’s response was spreading through cyberspace.
Within a day, hundreds of people had listened to her message, which was also posted on YouTube. A friend of Kori’s sent it to a local television news station, and it was aired on the nightly news program. As of yesterday, more than 9,000 people had clicked on the YouTube link. Hundreds of comments had been posted on the Facebook and YouTube pages, largely about what constitutes proper and polite requests for public information from students.
…
Kori, a member of the Lake Braddock debate team who said his grade-point average is 3.977, said his message was not intended to harass. He said that he tried unsuccessfully to contact Dean Tistadt at work and that he thought he had a basic right to petition a public official for more information about a decision that affected him and his classmates. He said he was exercising freedom of speech in posting a Facebook page. The differing interpretations of his actions probably stem from “a generation gap,” he said.
“People in my generation view privacy differently. We are the cellphone generation. We are used to being reached at all times,” he said.
Kori explained his perspective in an e-mail yesterday to Fairfax County schools spokesman Paul Regnier. Regnier said, also in an e-mail, that Kori’s decision to place the phone call to the Tistadts’ home was more likely the result of a “civility gap.”
“It’s really an issue of kids learning what is acceptable and not acceptable. Any call to a public servant’s house is harassment,” Regnier said in an interview.
Kori said that he was called into the principal’s office to discuss the matter but that he was not punished.
Candy Tistadt did not return phone messages, but Dean Tistadt credited Kori for having the “courage of his convictions to stand up and be identified.” He also credited him for causing the high volume of crank calls, not to mention considerable grief and embarrassment for his wife.
“This has been horrible for her,” he said, adding that he and his wife both learned a hard lesson about the long reach of the Internet.
Having spent a fair amount of my career annoying public officials at work and at home, I’m not about to criticize young Devraj for making a phone call. Here’s the wife. That’s before the honor student got serious about the harassment. Which, of course, was wrong. If instructive.
Topics: America, high school, moronocy
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:02 pm Comments (5) on Wednesday, January 23, 2008
5 Responses to “Young Citizen Demands Accountability”
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January 23rd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Kori sounds like he needed a slice of cheese to go with his whine.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Maybe it is a generation gap. Having been on the receiving end of constant demands for any and all information from younger people who don’t seem to recognize civil limits, I believe citizens should be inviolate in their own homes. Today’s ubiquitous technology doesn’t supersede the right to privacy and peace and quiet outside the work environment, IMO.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Sorry Jules, you and the kid are out of line on this one. “Public official” or not, calling up the wife at home instead of dealing with it at school was poor judgement, but posting the wife’s message and the home phone number and encouraging people to call them at all hours is just being an inconsiderate jerk. I note the kid does not post his own actual message, with words and tone of voice — how convenient. Honor student my ass. If you think this is somehow OK, if this is somehow “journalism,” then shame on you. Shame.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:50 am
There’s nothing new about this. If you say to someone “how dare you” and you have nothing to back it up, odds are they’re going to take that dare and run with it.
“Maybe it is a generation gap.”
My parents, both in their 60s, hate public officials who think they are beholden to no one just as much as this kid. And they have no compunction about demanding that they do their job.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
They did their job. They didn’t cancel school for a measly three inches of snow. I’m with the administrators: Shut up and go to school.