Last Week's Most Active Posts

Today I'll look at the most active threads of the past week. Since I'll skip any threads that were discussed in a daily report, this eliminates many of the week's leaders. However, the second thread overall in number of views was titled, "Secrets you keep from your spouse" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)". The original poster discloses that he had a past addiction about which he hasn't told his spouse and asks others what they have kept secret from significant others. I only skimmed a few posts in this thread and see that many mention sexual topics. This is likely to lead to the thread being flagged as adult content by one of our ad networks, forcing me to remove it. I laughed at the first reply in which a poster told of showing her husband a DCUM thread and his unknowingly singling out her post as being the worst take in the thread. She is keeping the fact that it was her post a secret. If you are interested in what others are keeping secret — and many must find this interesting given the number of views — act fast to read it before I will likely have to remove it.

Third overall for the week in number of replies was a thread in the "Health and Medicine" forum titled, "Doctor was 45 minutes late after appointment time". As the title suggests, the original poster describes her anger about her doctor being 45 minutes for an appointment. Again, I've only skimmed over some of the replies. The first few are not sympathetic to the original poster but instead offer possible explanations or defenses of the doctor. Later in the thread it looks like posters focus more on how long waits can better be addressed to take into consideration the interests of both doctors and patients. Many of the replies point to the fact that doctors' offices often have policies to bill or otherwise penalize patients that are late, but offer no recompense for the doctor being late. They consider this a fundamental unfairness and double standard.

A thread titled, "If Catholic schools were a state, they’d be the highest performing in the US on all four NAEP tests" and posted in the "Private/Independent Schools" forum was fifth in number of replies for the week, though it didn't make the top 10 in number of views. Count me among those who didn't view it, though I did have to remove a few posts that were reported. The original post embeds a tweet showing that recent standardize test performance indicates that the average scores of Catholic schools would rank above any state. Based on the posts that were reported and those that I noticed when glancing at a few pages, this thread manages to encompass a number of DCUM hot button issues. There are debates about private vs public schools, the alleged selective nature of Catholic schools which means they don't have as many struggling students, and the link between income and test performance.

The Catholic Church itself has always generated some amount of negative reaction on DCUM, often linked to past controversies involving pedophilia or policies that are seen as misogynistic. This rubs off on anything linked to Catholicism, including schools. This phenomenon has markedly increased since the Supreme Court's ruling on abortion rights due to the perceived influence of conservative Catholics on the Court. As a result, some of the pushback in this thread demonstrated this sort of anti-Catholicism. When these posts were reported or otherwise came to my attention, I removed them.

A thread titled, "Bus on Murch field trip crashes, kids hurt, bus driver charged with DUI" was seventh in views, though with a relatively low number of replies didn't make the top 10 for that metric. The thread, posted in the "DC Public and Public Charter Schools" forum, discusses an unfortunate incident involving students from Murch Elementary School in Washington, DC. The children were returning from a field trip to Cox Farms in Centreville, Va when their bus driver drove off the road and hit a rock, damaging a wheel. A few of the students suffered banged heads and other minor injuries. Adults on the bus forced the driver to pull over and called the police. The police discovered that he was drunk with his blood alcohol level being over twice the legal limit. A second bus carrying additional students and a third bus sent to replace the damaged bus were also stopped. None of the three drivers had a valid commercial driver's license and all three buses were found to have safety violations. As concerning as this incident was on many levels, it turned out relatively well for most of the students. They were taken to a police training center where they were entertained with activities while transportation home was arranged. Many saw this as a second field trip. Fairfax County Public School buses eventually rescued the kids and got them home.

The initial discussion on this thread was focused simply on gathering information. It then turned to a debate about the principal's performance in communicating with parents. Soon the posts turned to placing blame. The obvious culprit was the firm contracted to provide the buses, but many held DCPS responsible since it selected the firm. Some posters expressed disappointment in the adult chaperones who failed to detect the drunk driver until he ran off the road. These critics — who apparently consider themselves to have the noses of bloodhounds and the diagnostic capabilities of the most sensitive breathalyzers — couldn't understand why the drunkenness wasn't discovered earlier. Finally, the thread turned to a general discussion of field trip policies and transportation methods used by students. The fallout from this experience will probably be felt for some time as DCPS is forced to address what led to it and how to ensure it doesn't happen again.