Waking From a Nightmare in Baraboo

The superintendent details the healing and recovery since the social media posting of a repugnant photo of high schoolers posing in a Nazi salute

On Monday, Nov. 12, 2018, I woke to my 5 a.m. cellphone alarm. As a routine, I quickly perused any e-mails that came through while sleeping. I noted a concerning message from an individual who seemed to be a student stating: “In the attachment below, you will find a group of senior boys posing in the Nazi salute with the horrific caption saying ‘We even got the black kid to throw it up #barabooproud.’”

I looked at the photo in shock. It portrayed 50-plus of our Baraboo High School students dressed in formal attire and appearing to be giving a Nazi salute. Questions flooded my mind: What are they doing? When did this happen and where? Why would these kids do this? What is going on?

I hurried to my school district office as communications began coming in a frenzy. My communications specialist called me about attacks on our district’s social media accounts. My personal social media account was amassing hundreds of hateful messages. A social media influencer shared my name with all the large news networks. My desk phone was ringing nonstop.

I attempted to take calls and quickly discovered the whole world was talking about this photo and our 3,100-student school district located in a rural area about an hour north of Madison, Wis. A woman from Germany was screaming at me: “How can you raise such children?” My inbox delivered threatening messages, political rhetoric and global shame. Nearly 4,000 comments bearing our hashtag piled into our social media account within 24 hours. Every media outlet was demanding immediate answers.