The Most Active Threads since Friday

The most active thread since my last blog post was titled, "Washington Post article about Fromer Farquhar Administrator" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. As the title suggests, the thread is about an article in the Washington Post describing allegations against Montgomery County Public Schools Principal Joel Beidleman. Beidleman had been the Principal at Farquhar Middle School but was recently appointed Principal of Paint Branch High School. The Post article describes 18 reports of inappropriate conduct by Beidleman that include "harassment, threats, retaliations, workplace bullying and other inappropriate conduct spanning at least 12 years". Many of the allegations involved sexual harassment. Despite these reports of misconduct, the Post says that Beidleman has been a rising star in MCPS and his most recent promotion would have seen his salary increase almost six-fold. Needless to say, nearly all of those responding in this thread are outraged by what is described. The MCPS administration, including Superintendent Monifa McKnight, is accused of covering up Beidleman's misbehavior and there are many calls for McKnight to resign or be fired. For many of those responding, what the article describes is emblematic of the corruption and toxicity of MCPS in which employees fail upward — being promoted after failing — and rampant bullying is allowed. Some posters in the MCPS forum have repeatedly argued that MCPS concentrates on equity and diversity rather than fundamental academics leading to a decline of the school system. For those posters, Beidleman — who is Black — represents all that they have been warning about. In their view, his faults were ignored in order to promote a Black principal in the interest of diversity. Even posters inclined to be a bit more charitable are agree that Beidleman, a Black Male in a field often dominated by White women, might not have been given as close scrutiny as others might have been. MCPS has promised an external investigation but, for the most part, posters in this thread are pessimistic that there will be any real reckoning within MCPS. Posters repeatedly express doubt that this controversy will result in additional transparency or reforms to improve the system, let alone punishment for those who turned a bind eye to Beidleman's alleged misbehavior for over a decade.

The next most active thread over the weekend was posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. Titled, "MIL ‘taking back’ Thanksgiving hosting", the original poster explains that her mother-in-law and her husband's aunt have observed a tradition of trading off which of the two hosts Thanksgiving. A couple of years ago, the original poster and her husband purchased a new house which has two guest rooms and a third room that can easily be converted into an additional guest room. Therefore, last year they suggested that they also be included in the hosting rotation and it was agreed that they would host Thanksgiving this year. However, recently the original poster's mother-in-law said that she would like to host this year instead of them. The original poster and her husband are leaning toward simply announcing that they will have Thanksgiving at their home and those who would like to join them are welcome. Those responding basically fall into one of two camps. Many, perhaps most, support the original poster and suggest she follow-through on the plan she is considering. However, they warn that she should be prepared for nobody joining them. The second camp believes that elders deserve respect and traditions should be honored. Therefore, this group supports allowing the mother-in-law to host and warning against forcing family members to choose between competing hosts. On the fourth page of this 20 page thread, the original poster updated to say that she and her husband had gone ahead and told family members that they were going to host Thanksgiving as they had planned. In a subsequent post, the original poster said that her husband's aunt had told them that she would attend their Thanksgiving. So, the original poster seems to have won this battle and the thread could probably have ended there. But, the thread continued for much longer. Many of the same arguments simply continued, but also the original poster began sock puppeting responses. She routinely described herself as a "new poster" and offered support for the "original poster" who was, of course, herself. Original posters sock puppeting their threads seems to be increasingly common and I am noticing it almost daily as I prepare these blog posts. I assume that posters will eventually understand that I can spot their sock puppeting. At any rate, I locked this thread at some point though at this moment I have no memory of doing so and, therefore, can't say why I did it. But, had I noticed the original poster's sock puppeting earlier, I would have locked it earlier.

The next most active thread was titled, "Why are OOS flagships so popular these days?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster says that she has noticed that many students from the DC metro area have chosen to attend out-of-state public flagship universities instead of in-state mid-tier or top-ranked options. She is confused by this given the significantly higher cost of the out-of-state schools. This is a 38 page thread so there is no way I can read very much of it. Many responders point out that competition for the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland is fierce and students turned down by those schools may well be accepted by out-of-state schools that are better than other in-state colleges and cheaper than private schools. The University of Virginia is an especially controversial school in this forum for reasons that I don't quite understand. There are some posters who fanatically support the school and will not suffer a single word of criticism. Other posters have nothing but disdain for the University and would likely choose Northern Virginia Community College over it if those were the only two choices. Some posters argue that students choose out-of-state colleges over UVA for reasons other than having been turned down. For instance, some students make that choice because they want something different than UVA. But, UVA proponents won't hear of that and insist UVA would be anyone's first choice. Other reasons cited by posters for choosing out-of-state schools include a desire to get further away from home, an interest in campus environments not provided by UVA or UMD, and the possibility of receiving merit aid from out-of-state schools that decreases the cost difference. Some posters cite an interest in sports and a desire to attend universities that have top sports teams. A few pages into the thread it became almost completely focused on UVA with a few posters almost apologetically commenting about other colleges. Soon after that I gave up reading and, therefore, don't know what happened.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. Titled, "My niece just screwed herself", the original post is so short that I'll include it in its entirety, "She couldn't bother to send a thank you note for her wedding. I am done." This provokes lots of questions given the scarcity of information provided. But it turned out that the original poster provided a gift of a significant amount of money as a wedding present and, because she has not received a "thank you" card, is not exactly cancelling the niece, but won't provide future gifts. Much of the discussion is focused on how much time is allowed for sending thank you cards with some posters claiming that anytime up to a year is acceptable. Others think the time peråiod is limited to 3 months. Regardless, it has been over year in the original poster's case. Many posters think the original poster is being ridiculous and should let it go. The thread has a surprising number of posts from those who prepared thank you cards but then misplaced them, finding them much later. For example, one poster described a friend who found her addressed and stamped cards 12 years after preparing them. Another poster found her fully-prepared cards only after having moved twice and not unpacking the box with the cards until after the second move. That was more than a decade later. Several posters don't care about receiving thank you cards and are surprised that others track it so closely.