
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 4, 1995                   TAG: 9506060021
SECTION: EDITORIALS                    PAGE: D-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CANDACE BEAMER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STEREOTYPES

THE STUDENT Government Association at William Fleming High School would like to express our concern about the May 21 article, "The Kids Not In School," by Beth Macy. We understand the problem of truancy that exists in most schools in this nation. We believe our administration, teachers and counselors have diligently tried to solve this serious problem. In our opinion, the article seemed to single out William Fleming as the only high school in this area with the problem.

To show how biased the article was, Ms. Macy wrote three pages about the problems associated with truancy, of which 21/2 pages were about Fleming students. In those 21/2 pages, 10 paragraphs were devoted to a dropout of two years past; this was not even a student enrolled in William Fleming High School. Two other students Ms. Macy refers to were not Fleming students either. A student who was quoted prominently was not a truant but had legitimately checked out of school.

Ms. Macy further discriminates against our school in starting the article by referring to people's dress (baggy wool coat with the hood up and a faded bandana). Another student was shown displaying his tattoo. No student at any other school was pictured. Also, all the enlarged extra-dark quotations surrounding the article referred to Fleming in a negative way. One of the largest was a quote from the person who is not even enrolled in our school.

Ms. Macy wrote in the one-half of one column not devoted to Fleming in a very positive way about a YES counselor at another high school. However, Ms. Macy never interviewed a YES counselor at Fleming. She instead referred to one of our most-admired principals as giving a student "a verbal spanking so loud the windows shook."

We cannot understand why Ms. Macy was determined to slant the article against our school. We strongly believe Fleming is one of the greatest high schools in the nation. Unfortunately, due to this type of sensationalized journalism, no matter how wonderful Fleming is, no one outside the Fleming community will know anything but negative stereotypes.

We as student government representatives have called the Roanoke Times & World-News four times in the past two years for positive publicity. Of the four times, one time a reporter came and said how fantastic our show was for raising money for the March of Dimes, but the article was never printed. We sometimes joke that if we called and said that there was a fight or riot at Fleming, the Roanoke Times would be here in less than a minute.

We wrote this letter because we want the Roanoke Valley to know how proud we are of our school. We also want the community to know our school is not the way Ms. Macy portrays it. We wonder how long Ms. Macy took to research and write the article. She obviously did not interview our principals, counselors or any student representatives. In fact, it appears she researched the 21/2-page story on the truancy problem at Fleming in a one-day period. Being here every day, we know the story was completely inaccurate.

We are just asking for fairness. The article could have been written in several other ways. For example, why were most other schools in the valley not mentioned? We think it is only fair that the Roanoke Times & World-News issue a written apology and feature it as prominently as they featured the article.

Candace Beamer, a student at William Fleming High School, wrote this on behalf of the school's Student Government Association.

by CNB