Classroom is vandalized, teachers left to clean up

Olivia LeganStaff WriterQuotes scrawled on bright pieces of construction paper cover Mary Beth Reardon’s classroom in the Science building. Every year, her graduating students write a phrase that they identify with; it is a piece of them that will stay at the school when they leave. However, the area surrounding the clock is a white wall. The papers that once covered that area have been taken down following an incident of vandalism.According to Reardon, who was on maternity leave at the time, long-term substitute Pam Latham walked into her classroom on the morning of Nov. 29 to find a group of the aforementioned papers vandalized with permanent marker.  The students reportedly climbed onto the counter and drew on the papers.“It is really sad that people are doing these sorts of things; people are coming in here and standing on the counters and writing things when a lot of the stuff in this room are things from my house,” Reardon said. “To be honest, it feels very violating.”Later that same week, Reardon’s class was doing a lab that required coffee filters. She opened a drawer and found the filters damp  and stained. Thinking it was due to excess water, she removed them, only to see something brown in the corner.“I wasn’t sure what it was, it looked like a dead animal or feces; I freaked out. One of my students took care of it and it ends up that it was feces. We assume it happened the night that the papers were vandalized. But that is taking vandalism to a whole other level,” Reardon said. “There is a difference between something that written on a whiteboard and … this. This is a health hazard. It is just so disgusting and wrong.”Reardon’s first period students were the first to see the vandalism, along with Latham.“Seeing the graffiti was really unsettling,” senior Conrad McKinnon, who is in Reardon’s first period class, said. “Ms. Latham was concerned because she didn’t know if they were targeting her, the classroom, or if it was random.”I House Principal Renee Semik believes that Samo students have the power to stop vandalism.“I always say that the students decide how safe this campus is,” Semik said. “When the students decide that enough is enough, what is acceptable and what is not will change.”According to Reardon, there have been emails circulating among the faculty about the vandalism. Incidents such as this raise questions of teacher responsibility in regard to vandalism.“If teachers see something, we want to wipe it clean, but it is not in a teacher’s job description,” Reardon said. “Most teachers are more than happy to take care of it, but it is more complicated than that.”According to Semik, the increase in graffiti at Samo this year is partially the result of budget cuts, which have left the school with one less security guard to keep watch, and one less custodian to clean it up.“It’s irritating to know that this is how we spend our time,”  Semik said. “I would rather spend it talking about how we can better your learning experience or help you get into colleges instead of checking up on vandalism and how much it is going to cost us. Because unfortunately, we are the ones that have to pay for it.”olegan@thesamohi.com