美国国家公共电台 NPR Two Years After A Violent Altercation At A S.C. High School, Has Anything Changed?

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

You might remember the viral video in 2015 from a high school in Columbia, S.C. A white school resource officer confronts a student who is black. He flips¹ her desk on the ground and drags her out of her chair.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BEN FIELDS: Put your hands behind your back. Give me your hands. Give me your hands.

SIMON: Her teacher had called the officer in the classroom because the student wouldn't give up her cellphone. The incident sparked a nationwide debate about race, discipline and the role of school resource officers. And as Kat Chow of NPR's CODE SWITCH reports, it prompted changes in that South Carolina school district.

KAT CHOW, BYLINE²: It's 5:30 in the morning on a Monday. Hugh Harmon is helping³ his daughter get ready for school.

HUGH HARMON: You have everything in your bag that you need to take?

CHAI SOLEIL HARMON: Yes.

HARMON: And the permission slip?

CHAI SOLEIL: Yeah.

HARMON: And the money?

CHOW: Chai Soleil Harmon is 13 and in the seventh grade. In a couple years, she'll be a freshman⁴ at Spring Valley High School. And for her dad, what happened at that high school two years ago still hits close to home.

HARMON: If it was my daughter, I would absolutely lost it - my professionalism out the door. Daddy protection would of came out.

CHOW: Harmon heads the Black Parents Association of the Richland 2 school district, which includes Spring Valley High. It's a big district - 28,000 students, a majority who are black. Harmon has also worked as a school administrator⁵ in a district nearby. Like a lot of parents, when Harmon first saw that video two years ago, he was furious. It got to something he and the Black Parents Association had tough questions about for a long time, questions about discipline and race in the Richland 2 school district and the role of school resource officers.

HARMON: Is he a school police officer, or is he a resource, as the name suggests? Is he there policing the kids, or is he there to protect the kids?

CHOW: Good questions - and for answers, I turned to Leon Lott, the Richland County sheriff for more than two decades.

LEON LOTT: Well, they have many hats. That's why they're called a resource officer.

CHOW: Lott explained to me how his department uses SROs. As in many other places around the country, SROs are deputized officers assigned to a school. And Lott says they have all kinds of roles as they walk the halls.

LOTT: Educator, protector, counselor⁶ - a little bit of everything that's needed to build a relationship with our young people.

CHOW: And of course, they enforce the law and make arrests if necessary. But there's one thing Lott says his SROs do not do - discipline.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FIELDS: Put your hands behind your back. Give me your hands.

CHOW: Lott told journalists in 2015 that watching that Spring Valley video - it made him want to, quote, "throw up." He fired the officer involved. And Sheriff Lott tells me now, what happened two years ago was a turning point for how people in his department, the district and all across the country think about discipline in schools. Though the Richland 2 school district still has school resource officers, Lott says another thing needs to change, a state law that dates back to 1919.

LOTT: Disturbing Schools Law.

CHOW: The Disturbing Schools Law was meant to protect students at girls' schools from obnoxious⁷ behavior from outside agitators⁸, like flirting⁹ boys. Over the years, it was used for all kinds of things.

LOTT: Just us sitting here right now - if you're chewing gum and I told you to take the gum out and we're in a classroom and you don't take it out, you could be arrested for disturbing school.

CHOW: The people making those arrests - SROs. So that Disturbing School Law that was used by the officer at Spring Valley High to charge the girl he yanked from her desk and also another who filmed the incident. Those charges were eventually dropped. Lott says that law allowed SROs to interfere¹⁰ with exactly what he wanted them to avoid - discipline. And now lawmakers are trying to change that Disturbing Schools Law. A big reason...

JOSH GUPTA-KAGAN: There's a disproportionate number of African-American kids who are affected¹¹ by this statute¹².

CHOW: That's Josh Gupta-Kagan. He is an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina.

GUPTA-KAGAN: So if you've got a kid who is black, there's a decent amount of research that shows that good, well-intentioned, not overtly¹³ racist¹⁴ people will look at that situation and judge it to be more threatening if it involves black kids.

CHOW: And some of that research includes a recent report from Georgetown University. It shows that black girls are more than two and a half times more likely to be referred to SORs than their white classmates. And they're almost four times as likely to get arrested in schools. Here in Columbia, S.C., the school district says that over the past few years suspensions and expulsions are down overall, and enrollment¹⁵ is up. And everyone says they learned a lot from that video two years ago and want to move on.

HELEN GRANT: That was a very isolated¹⁶ event.

CHOW: That's Helen Grant the district's chief diversity officer. She says that school resource officers know that their role is to address criminal misconduct.

GRANT: We're hoping that our students become such good citizens that they are not participating in any criminal misconduct so that students would not need to come into contact with the school resource officer.

CHOW: Hugh Harmon and the other members of the Black Parents Association want their kids to be good citizens, too, except their worry isn't just about how their kids behave. It's about how they're treated. Kat Chow, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF AKIRA KOSEMURA'S "GRASSLAND")

1 flips   

轻弹( flip的第三人称单数 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥

参考例句：

• Larry flips on the TV while he is on vacation in Budapest. 赖瑞在布达佩斯渡假时，打开电视收看节目。
• He flips through a book before making a decision. 他在决定买下一本书前总要先草草翻阅一下。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

4 freshman   

n.大学一年级学生(可兼指男女)

参考例句：

• Jack decided to live in during his freshman year at college.杰克决定大一时住校。
• He is a freshman in the show business.他在演艺界是一名新手。

5 administrator   

n.经营管理者，行政官员

参考例句：

• The role of administrator absorbed much of Ben's energy.行政职务耗掉本很多精力。
• He has proved himself capable as administrator.他表现出管理才能。

6 counselor   

n.顾问，法律顾问

参考例句：

• The counselor gave us some disinterested advice.顾问给了我们一些无私的忠告。
• Chinese commercial counselor's office in foreign countries.中国驻国外商务参赞处。

7 obnoxious   

adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的

参考例句：

• These fires produce really obnoxious fumes and smoke.这些火炉冒出来的烟气确实很难闻。
• He is the most obnoxious man I know.他是我认识的最可憎的人。

8 agitators   

n.（尤指政治变革的）鼓动者( agitator的名词复数 )；煽动者；搅拌器；搅拌机

参考例句：

• The mud is too viscous, you must have all the agitators run. 泥浆太稠，你们得让所有的搅拌机都开着。 来自辞典例句
• Agitators urged the peasants to revolt/revolution. 煽动者怂恿农民叛变（革命）。 来自辞典例句

9 flirting   

v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Don't take her too seriously; she's only flirting with you. 别把她太当真，她只不过是在和你调情罢了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• 'she's always flirting with that new fellow Tseng!" “她还同新来厂里那个姓曾的吊膀子！ 来自子夜部分

10 interfere   

v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰

参考例句：

• If we interfere, it may do more harm than good.如果我们干预的话，可能弊多利少。
• When others interfere in the affair,it always makes troubles. 别人一卷入这一事件，棘手的事情就来了。

11 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

12 statute   

n.成文法，法令，法规；章程，规则，条例

参考例句：

• Protection for the consumer is laid down by statute.保障消费者利益已在法令里作了规定。
• The next section will consider this environmental statute in detail.下一部分将详细论述环境法令的问题。

13 overtly   

ad.公开地

参考例句：

• There were some overtly erotic scenes in the film. 影片中有一些公开色情场面。
• Nietzsche rejected God's law and wrote some overtly blasphemous things. 尼采拒绝上帝的律法，并且写了一些渎神的作品。

14 racist   

n.种族主义者，种族主义分子

参考例句：

• a series of racist attacks 一连串的种族袭击行为
• His speech presented racist ideas under the guise of nationalism. 他的讲话以民族主义为幌子宣扬种族主义思想。

15 enrollment   

n.注册或登记的人数；登记

参考例句：

• You will be given a reading list at enrollment.注册时你会收到一份阅读书目。
• I just got the enrollment notice from Fudan University.我刚刚接到复旦大学的入学通知书。

16 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。