OutdoorType

I don’t often watch the local news, so I am maybe a little slow coming to this story, but it’s really quite funny I think, especially as the student goes to my old high school.

I’m not sure if back in the day I would have ever called up a school administrator, but I did get all “radical” when I put together my zine senior year. This was back in the day when the series of tubes were relatively narrow and the graphical web browser was just about to be invented. Pages photocopied in the school library and held together by scotch tape were as high tech as a kid could get back then (but we still complained about going to school in three inches of snow! Sure kids in the midwest and northeast walk uphill both ways through snow drifts as tall as two story buildings, but have you seen the drivers in DC attempt to maneuver on slushy streets? It’s not safe in the least bit and school officials should do a reality check a little more often). In any case, I should scan the pages of my zine and post them someday. Enough of the editorializing, on with the Controversy of the Student and the School Administrator’s Wife!

Summary from the Post:

But a phone call to a Fairfax County public school administrator’s home last week about a snow day — or lack of one — has taken on a life of its own. Through the ubiquity of Facebook and YouTube, the call has become a rallying cry for students’ First Amendment rights, and it shows that the generation gap has become a technological chasm.

It started with Thursday’s snowfall, estimated at about three inches near Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke. On his lunch break, Lake Braddock senior Devraj “Dave” S. Kori, 17, used a listed home phone number to call Dean Tistadt, chief operating officer for the county system, to ask why he had not closed the schools. Kori left his name and phone number and got a message later in the day from Tistadt’s wife.

And a recording of the message as seen on YouTube:

The video transcribed (which does nothing to show the anger and contempt heard in Mrs. Tistadt’s voice):

This is Candy Tistadt, Dean Tistadt’s wife. This message is for Dave Kori. How dare you call us at home?! If you’ve got a problem with going to school, you do not call somebody’s house and complain about it. My husband was up at 4 o’clock this morning, trying to decide the best thing to do, to send you to school, on a day when the weather man is calling for one thing and another thing happens. You don’t begin to know what you are talking about, and don’t you ever call here again! My husband has been at the office since 6:30 this morning, so don’t you even suggest that he purposely didn’t answer his phone. He is out almost every single night of the week at meetings for snotty-nosed little brats, and he may not have called you but it is not because he’s home because it snowed. Get over it kid, and go to school. Get an education, that’s what you’re there for.