The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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  • Ojanpa, Brian

    Ojanpa, Brian

February 3, 2012

Ojanpa: This tag game, too, shall pass

By Brian Ojanpa Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — A playground game and the rumor-mongering strength of social media has placed a New Ulm grade school in the crux of an old saying: No good deed goes unpunished.

All this occurred after Washington Elementary School staff learned some kids were amusing themselves with rousing — if not arousing —  games they called “rape tag.”

That the recess game involved 15-20 fifth-graders — but 5 percent of the school’s enrollment — didn’t matter.

That the school put a quick stop to it didn’t matter.

That the game itself is far more innocuous than its name suggests didn’t matter.

All of that doesn’t matter when people become fueled by rumor, speculation and overreaction. And in 2012 the instant connectivity of social media such as Facebook can turn something like this into a flash fire quicker than Chicken Little could scream “The sky is falling!”

The chronology:

In early January a parent called Principal Bill Sprung to tell him the game was being played. Rape tag apparently is similar to freeze tag, except hip thrusts are used to “unfreeze” players after they’re tagged.

Inappropriate? Yes. Uncommon to the playground behaviors of prepubescent kids? Hardly.

Remember dodge ball and the long-ago variations kids came up with such as “murder ball” and “massacre”? Then there was “smear,” whereby any kid who picked up the ball and ran with it was fair game to be leveled. Childhood can be impertinent and unsavory at times, but it passes.

Sprung said he immediately notified the kids’ teachers, the matter was addressed in class (Sprung said other fifth-graders weren’t even aware of  the game), and playground supervisors made sure there were no recurrences.

The school handled the matter appropriately, its actions proportionate to the issue.

Then, weeks later, the Facebookers began conjuring speculation about  covert cover-ups and the like. Parents called the school to ask what the hey?

At that point school officials deemed it necessary to quell the rumors by sending explanatory letters to parents.

Sprung said parents would have indeed been notified if the games hadn’t ended. That they did end quickly and the school rightly saw no need to sensationalize them by sending letters home earlier is to the school’s credit.

At that point the school was in no-win land because even the explanatory letter, rationally explaining why letters weren’t sent in the first place, raised a ruckus among the easily flustered.

Sprung said more than a dozen parents contacted him to register their alarm because they now had to discuss sexually charged topics with their children.

In the first place, no they didn’t. In the second place, interacting with one’s children isn’t a bad thing.

And in the third place, parents’ real alarm might be in learning what contemporary 11-year-olds already know about such things. Sadly, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

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