Can we all agree?

There is a difficult, ongoing event in our community.

In Smithfield, there were accusations that several football players trapped a Jewish teammate in a bathroom. The details, reported in the weeks since the incident, are now being disputed and vary depending on who you speak to.

But the school committee, after three and a half hours of executive session, has decided to hire an attorney to investigate. And a complaint has been filed with the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office.

And on Monday evening, outside of the school committee meeting, flyers appeared, that called what happened “locker room antics.” These were attributed to “many parents of past and present athletes.”

As of this writing, we don’t know how this situation will be resolved, but I hope we can all agree on these points:

Any kind of attack – religious or racial or toward one’s identity – is unacceptable. It makes no difference if it is verbal or physical.

We as a community are rightly outraged. These kinds of attacks are not trivial, nor can they be dismissed as locker room talk.

We should recognize the potential impact on victims as these experiences could haunt them for years or even the rest of their lives.

It’s not enough to react after the fact. We need to put a greater emphasis on prevention – making sure there is education in the schools and that students and others in the community are exposed to more sensitivity and anti-bias training to assure we all know how to be accepting of each other and our cultural, physical and emotional differences.

Holocaust and genocide education is mandated for Rhode Island’s middle and high schools. That law was signed in 2016. This law focuses on all forms of genocide. And there is a commission in the state to assist.

And how about following the guidelines for bullying that are pretty prominently displayed on most school websites? I encourage you to look up those guidelines for your school or district. It is clear that locker room antics and hazing should be a thing of the past under these guidelines. We really shouldn’t have to worry about any kind of attacks on our children and grandchildren at school, public or private.

Most important: We should all talk to our children and grandchildren and make sure they know how to treat others with kindness and respect.

This incident has brought a lot of divergent parts of our community together in the last week and showed the strength and support in numbers. It should remind everyone that we have more in common than what separates us.

I’ve seen people I haven’t seen in quite a while as they turned out to learn, protest, and support our community. It was good to reconnect. It was even better to know they were turning out for a unified purpose.

That’s a strength our community needs.

Fran Ostendorf,

Editor