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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31649 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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And, once the grand jury investigation had begun, the legal office's emphasis on obfuscation was not limited to its 'independent' review:

On April 22, the same attorney filed another motion to quash testimonial subpoenas on behalf of three teachers at SBHS using, again, the same arguments. The court again rejected these arguments.

In this instance, however, one of the teachers was explicitly not represented by the attorney, even though he claimed to the court in a filing that he did represent her and was advocating on her behalf. The teacher said she felt pressured by the attorney into representing her, that the attorney told her not to provide the special grand jury with anything, and that the attorney tried to "shut [her] up" because "this won't look well for the schools."...

On the date of their testimony, the two school board members did not show up. The court gave them two hours to arrive at the courthouse otherwise the court would issue a capias warrant for their arrest. The board members subsequently arrived at the courthouse in a timely manner. One of the board members testified "it was based on my counsel's advice not to show up. Otherwise, I would have been here."...

Division counsel's mere silent presence in a crowded room was enough for LCSB's lawyer to claim the attorney-client privilege and instruct the witnesses not to answer the question... LCSB's counsel also inappropriately used hand signals and other methods to communicate with witnesses while they were testifying...

We received the May 28, 2021 email from the LCPS chief operating officer regarding policy 8040 and the SBHS incident in early September, even though it should have been produced months earlier in response to the April 7 subpoena to the superintendent. Instead, this email was produced pursuant to a document subpoena to a different LCPS administrator, who had their own lawyer, and not the preferred lawyer of LCPS division counsel...

Several school board members then testified to the exact same story: the chief operating officer said the incident at SBHS had to do with policy 8040 because the father of the victim who showed up at the school that day was shouting about policy 8040.

There is absolutely no evidence the father said anything about policy 8040 that day, or that he even knew what policy 8040 was on that day. No school board member could provide any evidence that what they claimed happened had in fact happened -- even though they all parroted the same story. Interestingly, multiple school board members also corrected special counsel to the special grand jury when asked about the individual wearing a skirt in the female bathroom that day; these board members were quick to claim he was instead wearing a kilt.

It'd be convenient if all of this tail-covering was focused on Policy 8040, and no small amount of it was, yet even to the extent Policy 8040 and broader trans-related stuff comes up, the school and its officers seem more interested in avoiding any controversy or blame on any sphere and from any direction, despite their significant powers and significant responsibilities. There is little or no evidence of ability to handle a non-culture-war variant of the same types of assault, or other criminal behaviors, despite evidence that they could have been occurring (39 missed notifications in one year!).

Unfortunately, the Grand Jury report falters when it comes to a conclusion. Despite everything above:

Unlike federal law, no Virginia statute explicitly addresses witness tampering, and the Virginia obstruction of justice statute does not cover htis fact pattern. For those reasons, we were unable to consider an indictment against the LCPS division counsel.

It gives, in the place of criminal charges, a list of administrative recommendations. Some range from the obvious to the tautological :

The LCPS directory of safety and security needs to be more involved in situations that threaten the safety and security of students, faculty, and staff.

While others are, bluntly, so broad and vague as to be unactionable:

Strengthen avenues of support and advocacy for faculty and staff confronted with challenging scenarios that could pose a danger and/or impede learning.

To the nearly unrelated:

The superintendent's recommendation for the non-renewal of a teacher's contract should be the subject of a separate agenda item and not placed on the LCSB consent agenda.

((Presumably a teacher mentioned fearing termination for testifying? Maybe?))

It's a little uncomfortable to realize that the team of people studying this problem for a full year don't seem to have noticed, or if noticed, do not seem to have found it worth a bullet point, an underlying problem where this entire environment seems more interested in the text of legal compliance and avoiding liability than in the safety of their students or clear liability to longer-lasting civil torts. Yet that seems to be the room temperature, here.

It'd be convenient if all of this tail-covering was focused on Policy 8040, and no small amount of it was, yet even to the extent Policy 8040 and broader trans-related stuff comes up, the school and its officers seem more interested in avoiding any controversy or blame on any sphere and from any direction, despite their significant powers and significant responsibilities. There is little or no evidence of ability to handle a non-culture-war variant of the same types of assault, or other criminal behaviors, despite evidence that they could have been occurring (39 missed notifications in one year!).

Is this at all surprising? Totally unrelated to any trans issues--I would not be surprised at this behavior for any scandal at a public school, or indeed any institution. This is perhaps a slightly extreme example, but really only because the initial crime is so bad. (I'd like to think it might be less bad at a non-public school, but that's probably just my bias showing.)

It's a little uncomfortable to realize that the team of people studying this problem for a full year don't seem to have noticed, or if noticed, do not seem to have found it worth a bullet point, an underlying problem where this entire environment seems more interested in the text of legal compliance and avoiding liability than in the safety of their students or clear liability to longer-lasting civil torts. Yet that seems to be the room temperature, here.

Sorry to take it in this direction, but I am still fairly convinced this was the motivation and rationale behind the majority of covid policy. It was the reason for the initial reaction, the subsequent overreaction, for mask mandates, for lockdowns, for rushed testing and for vaccine mandates. Saving lives was at best secondary to covering asses. Society is run by middle aged adolescents, their greatest concern is the same as any teenager - if they admit they fucked up they might get in trouble.

The consequences for a person running society to be known to have fucked up is generally much worse than getting grounded for a week.

That's certainly true, but that's why we historically gave the job of running society to people with the maturity to recognise and admit to their mistakes. To understand that running society comes with a lot of prestige and respect and power, but also dramatically more severe consequences for mistakes - and if you do fuck it up, the consequences to you - no matter how severe - are microscopic compared to the consequences to society. Or to put it another way, if you wouldn't prefer your downfall to society's you shouldn't be running society.

But I call them middle aged adolescents because the impression I get from speaking to them and seeing/reading them in interviews is that none of that even enters their thought processes. It doesn't have time to because like an irresponsible teen the calculus terminates at 'but what if I get in trouble!?' regardless of whether the consequences are some light mocking from strangers or an international incident. I used to think this was only something kids raised by narcissists did. I still sometimes think that.

but that's why we historically gave the job of running society to people with the maturity to recognise and admit to their mistakes.

That seems like the opposite of reality.

but also dramatically more severe consequences for mistakes - and if you do fuck it up, the consequences to you - no matter how severe - are microscopic compared to the consequences to society.

This kind of thing (more severe consequences of mistakes) incentivizes ass covering. If you want to incentivize 'admitting mistakes', then again, you'd need to do the opposite.

I don't want to incentivise anything. I am simply stating a fact - if you are running society, fucking up has more severe consequences than if you aren't running society. And separately, regardless of how much you personally suffer from the consequences of your mistakes, they will pale in comparison to the suffering of the society you fucked up.

While I do agree there are people out there who get scared by harsh consequences but are too power hungry/narcissistic to take that as a sign they shouldn't be anywhere near the levers of society, they are the aforementioned middle aged adolescents.

I'm not totally sure what the difference is, but I have some ideas. Aside from narcissist parents, it could also be to do with the level of comfort - as the saying goes, hard times breed hard people and soft times breed soft people. Which is why, if you want to see leaders of the calibre I mentioned, you look at times of war and hardship - times where fucking up might result in being conquered or getting everyone you know killed. Or for modern examples you look in places where violence is still just a part of life - gangs, cartels, crime families.

If you are thinking 'the king who fell on his sword for his country is rarer than Tyr the vanquishing warlord' you are right, but kings are supposed to be outside of the chain of responsibility - and they often led rather comfy lives. Generals though, and other military officers, did it so often they have memes about it. Falling on their sword for example, which dates back to the classical era but is most often associated these days with Bushido culture. And dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori - which prior to world war 1 was used entirely unironically.

I guess I have to get back to my main point, although I have no idea what to say, it's all so bizarre. The consequences of an action are what they are. A pr campaign isn't going to change them even if it changes the perception of them. And what do you think will happen when people find out that you... massaged the presentation of the consequences? We don't have to wonder, that exact deceitful strategy was employed repeatedly during covid. And all it did was destroy trust and lead to a situation where nobody knew what the consequences were, couldn't ask anyone and succumbed to fear. Beside that, if you are in a position to shape the presentation of consequences to the leaders of society, they aren't the leaders of society - you are.

Has any society ever been good at selecting for leaders who will fall on their sword if need be?

Japan, literally.

It's a little uncomfortable to realize that the team of people studying this problem for a full year don't seem to have noticed, or if noticed, do not seem to have found it worth a bullet point, an underlying problem where this entire environment seems more interested in the text of legal compliance and avoiding liability than in the safety of their students or clear liability to longer-lasting civil torts. Yet that seems to be the room temperature, here.

Black pill- the people studying this do not see it as a problem. The goal is to legally comply with the text and preserve any bureaucracy from accountability. It is not to protect either the institution or the students- schools don’t care about large financial liabilities, they’ll just raise taxes to cover it, and no one in this bureaucracy is at any point incentivized to care about the kids.

In the sense that the school administration and board didn't see it as a problem in that way, yes, and indeed the grand jury report spells it out, if perhaps in circumspect terms:

... throughout this investigation we have learned LCPS as an organization tends to avoid managing difficult situations by not addressing them fully.

In the sense that the grand jury recommendations are couched in terms of policies that would preserve the school bureaucracy from accountability, kinda. There's actually a pretty serious indictment of the school system's near-complete abdication of responsibility -- literally, that LCPS "bears the brunt of the blame" -- as well as individual actors. And yet, those bad actors are named only by role, not by name; the efforts toward encouraging the bureaucracy to be better couched entirely within the assumption that the school administration would remain consumed by and for administrators above students. Nor could the administration be above individual people; quite a lot of the obfuscation from the LCPS legal counsel seems focused on covering the individual reputations of bad actors even at the expense of the school's reputation.

We don't know the members of the grand jury, but they were appointed by a local Republican for whatever that matters. And yet they don't seem to be willing to burn down the administration or to encourage putting safety above Goodharting, even as they say the only reason they did not deliver an indictment was a lack of sufficiently close statute. If they too are captured, there's a fun question first of how, but also of what capture means when it can be so broad as to include them.

To be honest, there’s lots and lots of republicans that do boring work like this(and yes, no matter how juicy the situation originating the investigation, this is a lot of boring work) who are extremely literal-textualist in outlook and so will do things like not recommend charges for gross negligence because there isn’t a sufficiently close statute.

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