double speak

AAAAAAGH! as Charlie Brown would say. The principal calls an emergency faculty meeting this afternoon (finally) only to say absolutely nothing and take an obscene amount of time saying it. Instead of stating that Teacher X had been arrested for assault, he says, "I'm sure we're all aware of Teacher X's (pause) difficulties and that she and her family are in our thoughts and prayers." Talk about a euphemism. Then he goes on and on and on in his oh so typically inarticulate way to say that he doesn't know anything, that the reason we hadn't had a meeting earlier was because he didn't know anything, and that he still doesn't know anything but felt it only fair to share the nothing that he knows (or doesn't know?) with all of us. And that we should refrain from sharing with our students, or if we must, simply share that, like him, we know nothing. Right.

Then the intervention guy gets up to tell us that in situations like this rumors run rampant. Ya think? And that it would be a good idea to let the kids share the rumors that they have heard, to get it all out in the open. So Lesbian-Former-Coach brilliantly asks, "Okay, so we let them share all the rumors they've heard. Then what? You've just told us that we don't KNOW anything, so how do we correct any of the rumors they may have shared, how do we offer anything factual to them, if we don't KNOW anything? Or do we just let them share and perpetuate the rumors?" And intervention guy hems and haws and says, "Well, maybe it would be best if only Teacher X's classes actually discuss this in detail."

Next Principal Idiot reiterates, once again in response to Lesbian-Former-Coach, that all of his information is second and third hand, that if he had any first hand info appropriate to share, he would share it. What he doesn't know is that our Baby Dept. Head already told us that, in a conversation with Principal Idiot, Principal Idiot revealed that he had spoken directly with Teacher X this weekend, during which conversation she was in fact in jail and during which she professed her innocence and intent to plead not guilty. Would that not count as first hand? As Lesbian-Former-Coach succinctly expressed in an aside, "He just lied to me again."

It's so nice to be working in such an open, supportive environment.