What Were They Thinking?
20 The Great Debate
“I DON’T KNOW,” I said to my friend Martin. “If you look at the whole thing the way they explained it, it’s a good agreement. Especially since I’m only going to let her go out with a group anyway. It tells me the group she’s with is safe. I just don’t want to think of her in that light. She’s still a little girl.”
We’d met for coffee as we often did when I had a break that coincided with his many trips to the school board office. He’d won election to the Board three years ago and his group won a majority in the election a year ago. They’d made him President of the Board this year and he was exercising a strong will in guiding the Concerned Taxpayers group. They were fiscal conservatives and the school budget had been tightened significantly under their guidance.
“Kids don’t have the same discipline we had growing up. Parents just shuffle them off to the school and turn them loose. It’s a disgrace,” he said.
“You know very well that’s not what I do,” I retorted.
“Of course not! But look around you. Our church is one of the last bastions of decency in the community. The Methodist church just admitted a colored family as members. I’d expect that of the Catholics. And the Unitarians… They aren’t even Christian. Sure, there are other preachers besides Pastor Clark who preach the gospel, but we are headed for a revival among the people of God.”
“The school isn’t the church.”
“We need to get each day started with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance. That’s the way it was when we were in school. Even in third grade, my classmates were ready to pound the Japs. There’s no patriotism in the school. We have a history teacher in the junior high who has admitted to socialist leanings. A commie in our school! Not once we get a new superintendent. We’ll clean up that mess.”
Martin had taken me under his wing soon after Bea and I moved back to Indiana. He was part of why we chose our church after visiting several. He’d been on the welcoming committee who visited us afterward. His wife cooed over baby Cassandra and was often the babysitter of choice when she was little. Sadly, she’d passed away only a couple years later of some virus. Martin had thrown himself into church and community service, leasing out most of his farm so he could do more volunteer work. He was a good man.
Over the years, though, he’d become a bit harsher without his wife to temper his spirit.
I wasn’t expecting the storm that hit the second week of school that fall, though. Cassandra was a sophomore and there had been little contact with her dating group over the summer—at least little with the boys. I had to rein in my emotions regarding what girls she was spending time with. The cheerleaders she spent time with… Even for an old conservative like me, seeing a busty girl in tight clothes and having the word ‘cheerleader’ appended to her name lights up a warning flare that screams ‘woman of loose morals’. Perhaps it was my own high school fantasies that were speaking rather than the girls themselves. Bea assured me that the girls were an important part of growing up and socializing. And Cassie did seem to be blossoming.
At least Brian Frost was gone for the summer.
I didn’t even hear about the new rules instituted at school until Sunday when Martin gave me a copy.
“Nathan Dewey, our new superintendent, is going to put a stop to the degenerate behavior around that school. And he has the full support of the board. We’ve already pulled down the cost of building the new school and have avoided some serious legal problems that were on the horizon regarding the space required for the school and facilities. Those liberals were running out of control,” he said.
“Is Mr. Dewey coming to our church?”
“No. He’s Baptist and is attending First. They are good people over there and it wouldn’t be proper to have him attending the same church as the President of the Board.”
“Congratulations.”
“Congratulate me when we get that cesspool drained and cleaned up. We’ve re-instituted reciting the pledge at the beginning of the day and it is to be followed by one minute of silence for prayer. Since we aren’t leading an actual prayer, we’re free from the ban but everyone gets the point.”
“Sounds like things are on track for a good year,” I laughed.
There were only three points on the new school regulations with nearly a page of description for each. It really only clarified things that we thought were a part of the school policy in the first place. The dress code was respectable. School was no place for displays of affection between students. It certainly had never been so when I was in school. Emily and I had an intense relationship for some time but it was well-hidden from school. And I was all for the zero tolerance policy. I figured even Brian Frost would get behind that since he’d been on the receiving end of a gang’s attack just two years ago. It was a good thing.
I couldn’t imagine how strong the students’ reaction would be to the heavy-handed approach the Board took. A number of congratulatory comments were passed around at church Sunday and Pastor Clark preached a rousing sermon on the church’s responsibility to influence politics and to return morality to the schools. He had quite a list of things beyond what the Board had dictated that he wanted improved in our educational system and even endorsed several candidates for the November election who were known conservatives. Sunday afternoon, I took my wife and daughter to the lunch buffet at China Garden.
“How are you settling in with school this year, Cassandra?” I asked. “I’m sure it has been good to see all your friends again after the summer.”
“School is a very unhappy place, Daddy.” I hadn’t heard such a negative response from her in nine years of school.
“Is someone picking on you? There are rules against that,” I declared. I was ready to go to the school on Monday and lay down the law. She didn’t answer me directly.
“Mommy, I’m wondering if you could take me to the fabric store. Shipshewana would be best. They’d have both simple colors and patterns for a new dress. I bet they even have those little white bonnets.”
“Uh… we could make a trip…”
“Cassandra? What is going on?” I demanded. My ‘father’ voice carried through most of the restaurant, I’m afraid.
“The school administration seems to believe we should all be Amish. I’m just getting a new wardrobe ready.”
“I don’t think anyone is asking that of you. What do you do in school that is against the new policy?”
“Oh, nothing, Daddy. You’ve always been much stricter. I had hopes, though, that one day I would get to grow up.” She stood from the table and went to fill another plate from the buffet. I turned to Bea.
“What is that about?”
“Based on what I’ve heard noised about among the mothers, I’d say the students are on the verge of an outright rebellion. Maria Davis told me that the regulations had been so tightly enforced at the dance after the game Friday night that the students had all left and gone to the drive-in.”
“That’s ridiculous. None of them should have been doing anything against the new policy in the first place. Certainly not Cassandra.”
“Of course not, dear. But she will rebel, too. Only you know your daughter. She will rebel by taking obedience to the extreme. Dressing like an Amish woman is completely within the dress code. I’m afraid the Board is out of touch with the times, John. You didn’t abide by such strict rules when you were in school twenty-five years ago.”
“We had no need for these rules. We were taught proper behavior at home.”
“As we’ve taught Cassie. But we are underestimating the response to the situation.” Cassandra returned to the table with a full plate. I don’t know where she puts so much food. She’s still thin as a rail. “Did you have a color in mind, dear? I know pale blue is very popular but I’ve also seen some of the girls in yellow. There are even a few prints that seem to be okay—especially gingham.”
“Oh, I would feel just like Anne of Green Gables if I had a blue gingham dress,” my daughter said excitedly. I let the conversation go where it would and tried not to be critical. I feared, though, that this was only the beginning.
“Oh, everything will settle down after the debate,” Martin said when we met for lunch the next week.
“What debate?”
“The debate teacher at the high school—Mrs. Hammer, I believe her name is—approached the Board with a novel idea for getting student buy-in and capitulation to the new policy. She’ll have two sides debate a proposition to rescind the new policy. Of course, it will have no bearing on the actual outcome. We’ve no intention of reversing it. But it will give the students an opportunity to vent and let one of their own convince them that it is for the better. Really, a brilliant plan. Dewey approved it almost at once,” Martin said.
“What if you lose the debate? Won’t that make the students even angrier?” I asked.
“There’s not much chance of that. First of all, Mrs. Hammer has assured us that she weighted the scales, so to speak, by putting their strongest speaker on the side of maintaining the rules and their weakest on the side of rescinding them. And if that weren’t enough, the school board will judge the debate. We have a supermajority. With Dewey also sitting as a judge, we will have six of ten votes guaranteed,” Martin said.
“Nine?”
“In addition to the school board and superintendent, there will be two independent judges from other schools,” he said. “Even if by some chance they vote against us, we can discount them as having been brought in to make the students look good.”
Martin was enthusiastic about the proposed debate and I caught a spark from his fire. It was a brilliant solution. The students would have their say. The debate would clearly favor the administration. Defeated, the students would submit to the yoke of burden they felt had been lowered on them. By Thanksgiving, the whole thing would have blown over.
Cassandra and Bea had, indeed, gone to the big fabric outlet in Shipshewana and purchased material for three new dresses. They were cute. In fact, they reminded me a bit of the dresses girls wore in the fifties, cut below the knee with full skirts. The prints were not garish, but just added enough texture to the cloth to make it interesting. She wore flat black shoes with white socks. I was happy to see she eschewed the little white bonnet of the Amish.
I was sure to compliment her on her new clothes. A fortune in clothes she and Bea had bought in August for the new school year went untouched in her closet.
“Daddy, I need an event permission slip for the debate,” Cassandra said. “You will come to see it, won’t you?”
I was surprised that ‘The Great Debate’, as everyone was calling it, had generated so much community interest that it had been moved to a Monday evening. A very attractive invitation had been sent to all parents, encouraging them to attend. I signed the permission slip.
“I’m glad you are taking such an interest in it,” I said. “I do like your simple dresses, but why aren’t you wearing any of the clothes you and your mother bought before school?”
“Oh. I’ll show you,” she said and ran out of the room. A few minutes later, she was back and had changed clothes. She wore a very nice skirt and blouse—the kind of thing I would expect a fashionable young woman to wear to my office at the bank. She looked quite professional.
“That’s lovely,” I said. “You look like a young professional. You could work at the bank.” To my shock, she knelt in front of me.
“Doesn’t meet the school regulations,” she said. She pointed at the skirt hem just above her knees. “According to the dress code, a woman’s skirt hem must touch the floor when she kneels.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I said.
“No, Daddy. That’s policy. Nearly half the girls in school have at least one violation and most of those have two. One more and they could be suspended. I know you wouldn’t want that, so I’m careful to only wear things that would make you proud of me.” She turned and left my study while I sat there looking out across the airstrip.
“I assume I’ll see you Monday evening,” Martin said at our Friday lunch.
“I’ll be there. I expect you’ll be too busy to speak to,” I said. “Are you sure the new policies are all… let’s say, fair? I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Don’t go soft on me, John. We have evidence the new policy is working. Fewer than half of those cited once are ever cited again. And with Brian Frost in the debate, we really can’t lose,” Martin said. My blood ran cold.
“Brian Frost is a slippery one,” I said. “He can twist words around to make you believe you’ve said something you didn’t. I would not take having him as your opponent lightly.”
“John, he’s arguing the part of the administration. Dewey had him into his office for a full briefing and I even met with him to make sure he had words that would appropriately mesh with my re-election campaign this fall,” Martin said. “Mrs. Hammer promised her most eloquent debater to us and we have him.”
Sunday brunch was strained. Cassandra seemed distracted and I saw her lips moving on occasion.
“Is the debate between individuals or a team event?” I asked.
“Individuals,” she responded absently.
“I thought you were involved. I understand Brian Frost is arguing the part of the administration.”
“Mmmhmm.” My daughter looked up at me and suddenly broke out in a huge smile. “You will be so proud of me, Daddy. I’m arguing the part of the students and plan to put Brian Frost in his place.”
What? How? I had no words.
Of course, I wanted to support my daughter and the accompanying destruction of Brian Frost would be a guilty pleasure for me to see, but she was on the wrong side. I had to support the School Board and my friend. I thought I might still work with them to modify some of the more restrictive clauses. But that would be after the debate.
For the first time in my life, I wondered how I could support my daughter and also what was right.
My eyes were opened Monday night.
First, seeing the students assemble in a quiet orderly fashion, all while wearing prison shirts. A thousand of them! And then to see the curtains open and both my daughter and her…
The dawning realization hit me harder than the opening words of the debate. My daughter was debating her boyfriend. They were in collusion. With the first words of their positioning statements, I could see the School Board and Superintendent had seriously misjudged the event. And then, in the summary statement, my daughter subtly threatened an all-out student rebellion.
“It is no longer an issue of whether these arbitrary rules should be reversed. They must be reversed. You face a student body united. If you expel us all, there will simply be no St. Joe Valley Junior and Senior High School for you to rule over. This resolution must pass.”
My daughter’s closing statement. I saw her in a new light. I’d always held to some primitive belief that women should submit themselves to their men—fathers and husbands. But that was my own distorted reading of the scripture. I might still guide my daughter, but she was no longer my little girl. Martin had characterized the opposition as weak and timid. He had not counted on the strong and intimidating young woman who stood before him in this debate. And Brian, yes, without a doubt, he was her boyfriend. He raised the debate to a different level in his closing remarks.
“You cannot unvote that by standing and saying that these new policies should be reversed. There is only one forum in which you can do that and it comes on November third. Tonight, you have no choice but to vote with me. On Election Day, you can vote your heart, your passion, and your children’s love. Today, you must vote to uphold the decisions that you empowered. There is no simpler choice.”
The students were taking it to the November elections.
I remained seated as they called for the vote. For both sides. For the first time in eighteen years, I found myself wanting a drink.
I stayed hidden Monday night and left for work early on Tuesday morning. I’d spent most of the night on my knees in my study, asking God for guidance. Words from my first serious confrontation with my daughter kept coming back to me.
“Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Colossians 3:20.” I knew I was in trouble when she didn’t back down but stared me straight in the eye and continued the quote.
“‘Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.’ Colossians 3:21.”
All day in my office at the bank, I was distracted by the headline in the morning News. ‘Student Debate Lampoons School Board.’ I ignored a message that Martin had called me. I could not deal with him at the moment. When I left the office, I picked up a copy of the Tribune. ‘Student Debaters Suspended in Confrontation with Superintendent.’
I swore. I had not allowed a foul word in my vocabulary since I got sober. Why hadn’t I been called? Where was my daughter? I did not strictly adhere to the speed limit as I returned home.
Cassandra did not get home until six-thirty.
“Go to your room at once,” I said. “I cannot speak civilly at the moment and want you safe from my anger.” She looked at me in horror and ran to her room. Bea looked at me as well and, after putting a dish of food on the table for me, went to our bedroom and closed the door. I left the food on the table and went to my study where I sank to my knees.
“Is this my punishment, Lord? Is this what you reserved for me when I dropped bombs and convinced myself that the rain fell on the just and unjust alike? I didn’t want to kill people! God, forgive me. How can I even pray to you for the protection of my family? How can I ever guide my daughter to God’s love when I have betrayed it so completely?”
I didn’t get an answer from God. Instead I got a phone call.
“John, it’s Hayden Frost. We need to help our children. Did you get a call about their suspension?”
“No! My daughter was suspended for rioting in the cafeteria! Your son is responsible for this. He led her into this.”
“John, have you talked to her?” Hayden shouted. “I know Martin is your friend and goes to your church, but this isn’t about religion or morals. They suspended our minor children without cause and sent them off school grounds without even notifying their parents. John, our children deserve our support in this, not our punishment.”
“I don’t know how to do that, Hayden. I don’t know how.” I caught my breath and then plunged on. “My friend… if what Cassandra said in the debate is true, my friend unloaded flooded property onto the district that will cost more than the original estimates for the building to mitigate. The district’s morality policy will cause a student rebellion and teacher strike. How can we advise our children? What can we do?”
“Can I stop by for a bit, John? Let’s see if we can figure out how to support our children. And for God’s sake, go hug your daughter.”
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