Maybe this one should be titled, “Tell Me What I’m Missing.”
Buhach Colony High School (California) principal Robert Nunes was placed on administrative this week after a video of an obviously planned and choreographed bit of foolery with the basketball team’s mascot “went viral.” It was a pep rally. Mascots (which I hate, but that’s another issue) frequently do these kind of routines, and bringing authority figures into the gag is standard fare, giving the human butts of the giant costumed things a chance to appear more human, show they are good sports, yada yada. I’ve seen baseball managers get in to faux fistfights with these escapees from a Disneyland parade. The crowd generally loves it, the morons. Big deal.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is is fair to suspend a high school principal for that routine above?
Everybody’s a critic! Would I have agreed to do what Nunes does in the video? Not a chance. Still, as a director I give him points for enthusiasm and commitment. Is the issue that he forfeited his dignity? I’d ask if there is a single student who saw that nonsense who left the rally thinking less of the principal. I assume parents complained. OK, then you pull the principal aside and say, “That went a bit too far for some old fogeys, Bob. You have to be more careful. Don’t do anything like that again.”
If the principal had spontaneously crashed the mascot’s performance and acted like that, I’d assume he was drunk or nuts—then you suspend him. But this? At worst he crossed a line of decorum while trying to show school spirit.
Is the problem is that the interaction with the giant Viking was seen as sexually provocative? With someone costumed as a Viking? Ethics Alarms almost always rejects the “I was joking!” excuse for unethical conduct, but when there is no chance in the world that anyone watching something would think it could be anything but a joke, it’s a justifiable defense.
Perhaps the school authorities felt that Nunes’ participation in the routine held the school and the school district up to ridicule because of the video. Boy, they need to teach The Streisand Effect in graduate schools. Nobody would have thought twice about this episode if the principal hadn’t been punished.
Okay, now tell me what I’m missing….
UPDATE: Well, commenters below explained that “skit,” or whatever it was, sufficiently to a) penetrate my unimaginative inability to see a giant Viking messing with a bald, fat guy in an office chair on a basketball court as a simulated lap dance b) to recognize the obscene symbolism of the champagne popper as an ejaculation (I once used a popper as a gag in a show, and after this I’ll never be able to watch that video again) c) understand what the principal shouted was referring to, which I did not initially even after multiple viewings.
So, finally, I get it, I’m nauseated, I’m embarrassed that I’m so naive that the idea that a high school principal would ever deliberately participate in something so obviously didn’t even penetrate my brain, and I’m convinced.
Robert Nunes is an untrustworthy idiot who should be fired and prevented from working as an educator permanently.
Ethics Alarms 
The viking was twerking him during a lap dance?
I’d fire him for being a dope. Send him to some other school and let him be a football coach or teach drivers ed. Obviously over promoted.
I did not see twerking and what I did seemed relatively benign. The only exception might be the interpretation of device that popped and sprayed glitter.
What concerns me is the growing number of concerned parents who try to find something to criticize in public education because they cannot or will not challenge policies that have a far more detrimental effect on students. Focusing on relatively innocent events and getting one’s panties in a bunch over it dilutes those events or inadequacies among public educators.
There are far bigger fish to fry than this.
Jack,
The part involving the confetti popper ejaculation counts as justification enough, to say nothing of the faux-felatio finale. Not to mention the whole premise as completely inappropriate for minors.
Obviously no one believed the interaction represented anything but a joke, but it doesn’t matter — the routine employed infantile enough humor to raise questions. This wasn’t a silly pantomime in front of adoring fans at a park, it was a sexually suggestive lap dance (parody or not) in front of a crowd largely composed of minors. Moreover, the joke’s co-perpetrator also happened to be the person in the room with the most authority, and therefore held to higher (the highest, in fact) standards. As a kid, I certainly wouldn’t want any suggestion my principle even had a sex life, much less seeing how at home he looked during a striptease. [Speaking of which, he did look as though he’d done that before, which makes one question how he spends his off hours. Questions, by the way, parents and students shouldn’t have to wonder about their principal.]
How could any student take this guy seriously as a disciplinarian again after this? How could any parent look at him seriously at a teacher conference? Would the joke have been as funny if the mascot were female or underage? In fact, do we (does anyone?) know the age of the mascot in question? Should a principal engage in sexual innuendo of any kind around students? What if he’d resorted to grabbing his crotch, or dry humping? Have I posed enough rhetorical questions to mimic a real argument?
Lastly, yes, MANY students left that assembly, thinking FAR less of the principal. I know I did. Not to mention their parents. He looked stupid, not cool or funny, and acquiesced to peer pressure for the sake of a stupid sketch. Moreover, he flashes the audience his fat beer belly while making dumb faces in front of cheering adolescents (whose humor or approval no adult should seek), all to try and prove he has a sense of humor. What an asshole.
To say nothing of the fact that he announced that, “What happens at Buhach stays at Buhach”. I’m biased against any phrase like that because it’s derived from the infamous “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Besides encouraging bad behavior when one is in Sin City, it’s not true. Gambling debts don’t stay in Vegas. The consequences of sexual profligacy don’t stay in Vegas.
Parents are already on guard about educators and administrators sexualizing their kids behind their backs and encouraging secrecy. Is it really a responsible idea to tell kids that what happens at school should be kept to themselves?
I have to agree with Neil and AM on this one. At minimum, the act calls into question the principal’s judgment and authority before the school. He is a high school principal and needs to set a proper example. I am not even sure my conclusion would be different if it happened to be the physics teacher or Brit Lit teacher because of their roles as authority figures. The coach or a custodian would lead to a different result even though our next VP might just be a former assistant football coach.
Here there is a suggestion of a lap dance with sexually charged imagery in front of a high school crowd, which means high school students who are minors. The principal might be a very good role model and he may run a successful school but he (or she, if that were the case) cannot allow the chief executive of the school to compromise that position, especially when there is a huge problem with school role models engaging in wildly inappropriate actions with students. I wonder if this a corollary to the Naked Teacher Principle. Perhaps firing is too harsh because it is clear that he entire this was simply a gag made in innocent fun but some form of consequence would be appropriate.
jvb
what I see is not that bad.
one concern I heard was that, if there was a student inside the mascot outfit, the routine involved inappropriate touching of a student.
-Jut
I guess the concept of a lap dance from a giant Viking was too much for my relatively innocent brain to process. The “ejaculation” imagery didn’t occur to me at ALL. At ALL. Perhaps because the principal was directed to act terrified at the beginning, as indeed I would be if a giant Viking was molesting me, the implication that he was being sexually aroused also never connected.
I wonder how many people interpreted it as salacious at the event, seeing it once and live? My guess is “almost none” or even “none.” The video, as in so many incidents, provided the opportunity to see it over and over to “get it.”
I’m convinced. What did I miss? Basically the whole point: a giant Viking mascot with a student of indeterminate gender inside giving an unwelcome lap dance to a fat bald principal in his office chair with a champagne popper symbolizing…ick.
They should fire the idiot.
I don’t know what the hell you do with the student in the mascot suit. Get him therapy? Make sure he registers as a Democrat?
I’ll add my confession of cluelessness to the post and my capitulation to Neil’s analysis.
You missed D) Simulating pulling down the top of the Viking like she was a stripper who just lost her top.
1) That too.
2) Like HE was a stripper. This all requires too much dissonance for me…
The pronoun choice was based on it only making sense to be titillated by the loss of a top if the stripper was female.
Which is why the whole thing is bonkers. There were no female Vikings.