I’m here to speak for the students. My name is Katelyn Tayler, I am a senior at Monroe High School. I am an honor student, I run cross country, I was in charge of decorations for this year’s homecoming planning committee, and I am the web, video, business, and feature page editor for our school’s newspaper, “Lotus Leaf.” I take pride in what I do and as a journalist, my job first and foremost is to bring the truth to the table and to speak for those whose voices cannot be heard alone. This job, of course, comes with an immense amount of responsibility, accountability, and ethics attached. Every journalism student is taught the values of ethical journalism before they ever write a single story in the class. I go into my Lotus Leaf class everyday with all of this at the forefront of my mind.

At the last school board meeting, a homecoming chaperone testified about her account of the events that occurred at the dance. During that testimony, a story I have written regarding homecoming was called into question. I am here today to clarify my account of the background of my story about homecoming.

As early as July 19 of this year, a group of several other dedicated seniors and I have been planning and preparing for this year’s homecoming dance. This was the first year that the responsibility for the homecoming dance had fallen on the senior class, as opposed to student council and so we worked with what we had to present a wonderful dance for the school. I am very proud of how the decorations and all of our efforts came to fruition. I will stand by that.

I attended the dance on the 24th with a group of my close friends, excited for the rest of the school to see what we had spent so much time working on. This year, we were even excited about some new additions to the night like a movie being played in the auditorium for those who weren’t big dancers. However, when Monday came around, our efforts were heavily overshadowed by allegations of some unusual things happening on the authority side of things.

As a journalist, I took on the job of sorting out the truth from the rumors. On Sept. 26, I caught Principal Sandra Kreps in the hallway and asked her if the administration was aware of the actions of a parent chaperone. She had not heard. Kreps asked me to let students know they could fill out an incident report. I decided to interview these students. I began my investigation. I interviewed more than 30 students, 5 teachers, and 3 parent chaperones over the course of three class periods just to try and make sense of what happened. On the fourth class period, Thursday Sept. 29, I went back over the nearly 40 interviews I had conducted and took notes of exactly what students, staff, and chaperones had said of the night. Nearly all of the student interviews named a specific chaperone who they had witnessed or experienced making students uncomfortable with her reprimanding, offensive statements and inappropriate suggestions to students who were grinding, and requests to leave the gym or in one student’s case, the building. The chaperone also allegedly went as far as to physically separate some couples.

Many of the students have since suggested that they would be hesitant to attend future dances, not because they were fearful of the dancing or the students, but because they were afraid of this chaperone. There was also not even a hint of a suggestion of ANY teacher even doing anything that could be misconstrued as “helping a girl grind.” Even so, when dealing with students, I know I must take things with a grain of salt as social media has escalated the amount of stories getting vastly blown out of proportion, so I kept that in mind. However, when I interviewed student after student who all said the same or similar things, I knew this couldn’t possibly all just be talk unless I missed some sort of meeting of the entire student body with a made-up story to pass around.

On the morning of Sept. 30, I made it known to Principal Sandra Kreps that I needed to speak with her that day regarding the final findings of my investigation. I wrote the final story in my third hour Lotus Leaf class, got it approved by the Lotus Leaf advisor Alison Drougel in fourth hour, and by fifth hour met with Kreps to let her go through the story and review and comment on it herself. We discussed the possible repercussions at length and by the end of the day, the story went up on our website lotusleaflive.com. We tweeted out a link to the story and just let the community read the testimonies of these students.

The whole situation began to weigh on me so deeply that students felt unsafe because of someone we called upon to help keep things safe that my mother even asked me what was going on with me that night. I explained to her the project I was working on and she was absolutely appalled. My mother and father both were chaperoning the homecoming dance this year as well and were horrified to know that while they were monitoring the common area and facilitating the movie for those who opted out of dancing, there was another chaperone inside saying things such as “if you want to have sex, take it back to his house or to the parking lot.”

That comment, although vastly upsetting to myself and surely others, wasn’t even what upset me the most about the allegations. The one that made me sick to my stomach was an account of a cheerleader. She, too, reported the chaperone saying “you are a cheerleader and represent this school. You need to act accordingly.” This quote was confirmed on both sides. However, a quote that was presented to me by three different cheerleaders that completely broke my heart was the chaperone calling one of the cheerleaders a “tramp.” In today’s society, there are enough things weighing on a girl’s self-esteem with her peers and the media alone. I have experienced this myself. But for a grown adult to approach a young girl, still trying to build her self-esteem, this is absolutely appalling. I understand the chaperone may have been disturbed by the dancing, but calling a young girl a name that will likely weigh on her self-image for the rest of her life is no solution to that upset. I speak for this cheerleader.

I also speak for the Class of 2017. Our theme for homecoming this year was Wacky Wonderland, which is a combined theme of “Alice in Wonderland,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, and “The Wizard of Oz.” We were all very excited to have a theme that students would be very familiar with as opposed to years past where students didn’t understand the relevance of the theme. Many of us stayed after school on the evening of the homecoming game to get a jumpstart on the decorating, and a few even came the next morning at 7a.m. to finish preparations. I have no doubt in my mind that there wasn’t a single senior who participated in preparations who wasn’t immensely proud of everything finally coming together in front of our own eyes. There’s a certain gratification that comes along with that.

Then, when I heard of what was said at the board meeting on Oct. 11, a close friend of mine of five years told me that he was sobbing over what was said. The dance that we were and are so proud of was dubbed a “Wicked Wonderland” and our class was suggested to offer up $5,000 of our hard-earned prom funds to another organization who did nothing to aid the preparations for homecoming. In all five years of our friendship, I have never heard my friend say that he had to leave an adult-filled room sobbing. All because he was brought to tears by the destruction of our success. My friend should not have had to go through this. I speak for the Class of 2017 and I speak for my friend.

Finally, as one of the editors, I speak for Lotus Leaf. I have listened to and read the allegations made at the last board meeting about the story that I wrote. It has been called to my attention that the chaperone in question was a first-time chaperone, instead of the second-time chaperone that we believed her to be. This was a mistake, as we all make several times in just a day’s time. However, the claim that my story consisted of “all lies” was completely unsupported and untrue. I support my story by the nearly 40 testimonies I collected. I support my story by the over six hours of my personal class time I spent working to get the closest version of the students’ stories out as soon as possible. And finally, I support my story by the immense online outreach I’m getting from students. The allegations made against my story and Lotus Leaf had nothing more than one person’s opinion backing them. I speak for Lotus Leaf and I speak for myself.

I know that in every story there are three actual sides: your own side to the story, your opposition’s side to the story, and the truth. By mostly presenting the opposition’s story at the board meeting, the students were unfairly represented. I speak for those who were not there to defend themselves and for those who do not have the platform to get their voices out there and to be heard. I aim for the truth to get out, the real truth, and presenting both sides is the first step towards reaching the truth.