On Books, Twitter, and Ourselves 

By Sydney Carroll

*Disclaimer: this is an Op-Ed which represents only the views of the author and not The Echo, its advisors, Battle Ground Academy or its administration*

I thought that BGA would trend on Twitter for the first time when The Masked Singer finally invited Chloe to compete, but boy was I wrong. Over the past several days, as you probably know, our school has become the subject of a social media firestorm regarding the content of the literature in our English curriculum. I’m sure many of you share my reaction: initial surprise, then shock, then likely frustration, anger, and hurt, no matter what side of the issue you fall on.

I could write an article on my personal views on the situation, the books, heck, I could even write my own curriculum. But I don’t think that’s needed – quite frankly I think that angry rants are what we need to avoid right now. I do, however, think it’s important to delve into this situation on our own campus from a student perspective, and as a microcosm of a much larger world.

This whole saga has not just taken place on campus, but largely online, a place where everyone was invited to comment on our little school. People from Nashville, Texas, California, and all over the world suddenly started arguing over… us. But they’ve never met us, nor have they met our teachers or read the books they so ardently oppose. Stakeholders in our community (parents, teachers, students, staff) certainly have a very valid opinion on what happens on Ernest Rice Lane. But people hiding behind names like “User 1101” or “Nikki Minaj’s Biggest Fan” are suddenly commenting on our school, critiquing our way of life, and launching very real and scary threats at our teachers – all people and things that they know nothing of other than what they’ve heard online.

And this, my friends, is where our true crisis lies. An issue about book content is not an uncommon or controversial event on a campus that encourages dialogue and above all else, understanding and community. But a social media firestorm involving thousands upon thousands of people is scary, especially when thinking about who these people are. As I mentioned earlier, these people have zero context for our school or the people involved. Yet they have an opinion. Why?

The why is because now we have an opinion on everything. We think the dress is white and gold, it was laurel, not yanny, and that because someone said a school was evil on the internet that it is. Groupthink and confirmation bias cloud our way of life so much that we form opinions on things we truly know nothing about, and we don’t attempt to learn before forming our opinion because that’s not the way our culture works. We yell, not discuss. We scream instead of listening, and we blame rather than understand. And the worst part is the cycle repeats. This week it’s us, next week it’ll be a school in northern Utah being vilified for a completely different issue. We feel shock, anger, hatred, rinse, repeat. 

And while the internet moves on, we’re still here, and for months our community will reckon with how a few days and a few thousand comments changed a lot for us. Our teachers will grapple with the death threats and insults they received, our administrators will continue to monitor our own social media pages for backlash, and we as a community will have the division we’ve endured on our collective consciousness. “Nikki Minaj’s Biggest Fan”, though, won’t even remember the name BGA. The damage has been done, and now that we see the aftermath we wonder how someone could possibly thrive off of berating a community they won’t think about next week. And yet, we’ve all done it. We feed into the relentless polarization and opposition of our country and the world with every comment, like, and retweet. From behind a screen we don’t consider or ponder or discuss, we act. But action without research, understanding, and perspective is simply manufactured outrage.

I hope that if anything good can come from the past few days, it’s empathy. Empathy for each other, our teachers, parents, administrators, and for those we judge from behind a screen. Every day I come to school I am so incredibly proud to belong to a place that celebrates our differences in opinions while encouraging dialogue. The internet does the opposite of that. Care for yourself and your community, and we’ll come out of this together and stronger. And hopefully, my next Twitter-related article has to do with Chloe finally being unmasked and nothing to do with literally anyone else.