Despite a reprimand for speaking out as a coach, Susan Fowlow is continuing her efforts to try to get a suspension lifted on some of the school sports at Stephenville High School.
In a letter to Wayne Lee, area trustee on the English School District board, she pointed to the fact all school sports at Stephenville High School have been suspended because of hazing practices that school administration became aware of around Oct. 18, 2017.
Related stories:
Student athletes at Stephenville High demonstrate in attempt to get back to playing sports
Stephenville coach frustrated teams can’t play during hazing investigation
She said that instead of suspending the team responsible for the alleged hazing, all teams, unfortunately, were suspended.
“As you can appreciate, this has an impact on not only physical and mental health, but also on scholarship applications, scholar athlete certificates through School Sports Newfoundland and Labrador, scouting opportunities and life experience in general,” she told Lee in the letter.
Fowlow said to date, as far as she is aware, no girls have been interviewed, investigated or spoken to, and yet all girls’ athletics are stopped.
She said that last Wednesday student athletes organized a peaceful protest with an effort to ask the school for the updates that they were promised and the school board to stop punishing everyone for the actions of a few.
Fowlow said she believes by throwing a blanket over all sports through suspending all programs, an opportunity to capitalize on “teachable moments” was missed.
She said the peaceful protest run by student athletes, which highlighted things like “real athletes don’t haze” and “hazing is just glorified bullying and we don’t support it,” suggests to her these students could have done a great job as advocates against violence.
“Unfortunately all athletes lost the opportunity to train, play and even talk about this issue,” Fowlow said.
Lee said the Newfoundland and Labrador English School Board is a governance board, so it’s not the role of the board of trustees to direct how schools are run.
He said as a parent, former educator and coach, he realizes the seriousness of what is taking place and as such he has contacted the chair of the school board, Goronwy Price, and CEO Anthony Stack and asked if there is a way the board could help the process move along more quickly and get it resolved sooner rather than later.
