Susan Vollenweider: Students show maturity amid Smithville uproar

Something happened recently in my small town that brought the news media to our school. Nothing new, right? Television vans with tall antennas are parked outside school properties all the time. It’s often a sad commentary on our modern society.

The thing that happened in my small town was a story similar to some from other places: A school official was placed on administrative leave for allegedly inappropriate actions with students.

When the list of 17 allegations against Smithville High School Principal Rudy Papenfuhs were made public, the media flocked and the viewers started commenting. Opinions that I read online by those outside of our school district all seemed to have that familiar message: What a sad commentary on our modern society.

What was on this particular list? Within the 17 allegations were two instances of providing medication to a student, purchasing a vehicle for a student, telling a sexually explicit joke and showing explicit YouTube videos to students. He allegedly added a student to his cellphone plan, another to his car insurance and bestowed gifts upon students as rewards.

He had been given a warning a year ago that this type of behavior violated school board policy, but, it seems, he continued. He provided students with rides in his own car to a Royals and a Chiefs game as well as to medical appointments, all without a parent or guardian present.

It looked bad.

“Wow. He messed up,” I thought.

I knew little of the man. What I had seen was nice, but nice-seeming guys do bad stuff all the time.

“What kind of a school am I sending my children to? What kind of adults are they going to be after attending a school where this type of behavior is allowed to go on?”

What happened next told me what being educated in this environment would do to the kids in my small town. What it would do to my kids.

It’s going to make them amazing adults.

While the uninvolved public was tsk tsking that another leader was caught in inappropriate behavior, our kids were speaking up in favor of him. Present and former students and many parents showed — through polite protests, petitions and social media — that they wanted to be just like him.

They wanted to become adults who might step across a line of rules to do what they felt was right. They wanted to become members of society who would look at a specific person’s motivations, history and individual behavior instead of checkmarks on a list of rules. They wanted to change the rules. They wanted to do what they felt the principal had done: risk everything to help others.

They wanted to help him.

They weren’t rude and they weren’t ugly. They agreed that he had broken the rules but urged those in power to examine the individual situations more closely. They shared testimonies of times they saw the principal step beyond his official title to become a man helping someone who needed it.

They self-monitored the behavior of peers who went too far in protests; they were mature and bold and spoke up for what they thought was right.

For the most part, they behaved in a manner that any parent could be proud of — that the principal could be proud of.

It is still a week out from a school board meeting that will decide the professional fate of this man. Regardless of the outcome, I have witnessed an encouraging and hope-filled commentary on modern-day youth.

The television vans with tall antennas need to tell those stories, too.

This story was originally published October 7, 2014 at 2:52 PM with the headline "Susan Vollenweider: Students show maturity amid Smithville uproar."