Newton South Principal Joel Stembridge sent this letter to school families…
Dear Newton South Families,
The school year is well underway here at South: Students are smiling, cheerful, and engaged, and teachers are happy to be back in the classroom. It’s been a great start!
I am writing to share with you a difficult decision, and to ask for your assistance.
For many years, South has had a tradition of hosting a girls’ football game between the seniors and the juniors (also known as the “powderpuff” game) in November prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. In previous years, I’ve written about my concerns for this game and the negative consequences for our school climate. In the past two years in particular, we have worked very closely with the junior and senior classes to try to ensure that the game – and the accompanying activities – had a positive impact on our school culture.
I want to be clear that, in general, the student behavior during the past two years has been acceptable. However, there are aspects of the negative impact of this tradition on our school culture that cannot be mitigated by better behaved students.
In short, I’ve decided that we will discontinue hosting the girls’ football game. I make this decision primarily to safeguard our students and out of concern for our school climate.
There are several specific points that inform my decision:
- The game itself is dangerous. Last year alone there were three concussions and one serious knee injury. A couple of years ago there were broken bones. In my four years as principal, we have yet to have an injury-free game.
- The game, and the lead-up to the game, destabilizes our normally supportive, welcoming, intimidation-free school environment. From groups of students marching through the halls chanting slogans to destruction of decorations to vandalism of personal property — this school-sponsored activity leads to incidents that we would otherwise describe as “bullying.”
- We have heard in previous years that for some of the girls the pressure to participate borders on coercion and creates a stressful environment in which they must choose between disappointing classmates and engaging in inauthentic and dangerous behavior.
- The event does not include the whole school. It does not celebrate the diversity of the interests of our students, nor does it encourage appreciation for skills and/or expertise developed here at South.
- And in terms of gender politics, the name “powderpuff,” which most students still call the game, inadvertently serves to mock the hard-fought struggles of female athletes to be taken seriously and, we think, perpetuates negative stereotypes about femininity and female athletes. Our young women’s athletic achievements deserve to be taken more seriously.
I am keenly aware that this decision will be very sad for many, and perhaps especially for some members of the class of 2014 who were looking forward to staking claim to the school through the girls’ performance on the football field. I’ve asked our housemasters to work with both our junior and senior classes to develop new traditions that will both bring each class together and also contribute to a positive school culture.
We’ve also been developing an idea to promote school spirit by creating a house-based Olympic-style competition that celebrates the full diversity of our wonderful, talented student body. We invite your son or daughter to help contribute to this process by sharing their ideas on this or other potential new traditions.
Traditions are important. I want to ensure that the traditions we maintain contribute to the wonderful, unique experience that is Newton South. Please join me in helping our students find the positive in this (perhaps) difficult decision, and continue to help us create the school we want and deserve.
Thank you for your support.
Best regards,
Joel Stembridge
Principal
I’m pretty sure that Joel was writing about the Powderpuff football game. He was not commenting on the Powerpuff Girls, who I suspect are alive and well…and beyond his purview.
Yep. Thanks Bruce.
Greg,
Get some sleep, and then in the morning change “Powerdpuff ” to Powderpuff .” 😉
Concussions and broken bones “perpetuate() negative stereotypes about femininity and female athletes”? Argument fail.
You’ve got to be kidding me with that ridiculous out of context mashing of 2 separate points Hoss. Either you are stupid or you think we are.
Wow – 3 concussions in a single game? That sounds pretty tough to me – and I played rugby in college! Definitely not “powderpuff”.
Stembridge makes it sound like the Seniors have clubs and treat the Juniors like baby seals.
This thing has gone on for many, many years and it’s the first I’ve heard of how “dangerous” it is.
If the school won’t sponsor (and control it) the kids will go off site and have an uncontrolled replay of the movie “300”. (Heaven forbid! In this day of adult controlled play??!!)
Enough with sanitizing and controlling kids activities.
By the way, if you read Stembridge’s letter you may not understand that IT’S A FLAG FOOTBALL GAME!
He can have more supervision through adult umpires and make it much safer, if that’s his concern.
The rest of his concerns- coercion to “inauthentic and dangerous behavior”, bullying, gender politics, and that the event does not involve the “whole school”- are powderpuffy, fuzzy thinking and over -protective of young adults who are about to leave home.
I’m with you Terry. Girls who have never played flag football don’t know what they’re doing, but the answer isn’t to shut them down. They don’t even know that they shouldn’t be shoving each other. Establish safety rules, educate them and add adult referees.
As for pressure to participate, come on. These are 16- and 17-year-old girls (and some 18, probably). When do we teach our kids to resist peer pressure instead of making the pressure go away? Most of them are going to college in the next year or two. The admistration will not always be there to protect them.
I’ll throw the caveat in that if the girls don’t care, then abolish the tradition. But the last I heard, all the senior girls were planning on wearing their jerseys to school today in protest.
Oh, it’s a *FLAG* football game??? Then I’m with Gail – teach the girls how to play the game (there are actual rules designed to limit injury), have a couple of real refs, and let them play!
If there’s coercion/bullying going on, deal with that – because it’s certainly going on in other contexts at school as well.
Lets just put a bubble over the City and nothing bad will ever penetrate it. Pretty soon, sports of all kinds will be banned in the City. It’s a shame.
The girls should come up wit a way to play the game and support some charity
If playing a flag football game is important than the question is do they have coaches, are they learning the rules, are they practicing? Or is this some sort of free for all.
I have never seen the game – but I also question – what are the young women wearing. Do they have a proper uniform or are they dressed inappropriately/provactively?
If it is flag football – why not co-ed?
If this is a school sponsored event – then I find the name Powderpuff offensive. How can we expect these young women to demand to be taken seriously and as equals in a man’s world if the school is sponsoring a demeaning “powderpuff” game which they feel pressure to participate in.
I believe Stembridge made the right decision and I hope it would be replaced by a more inclusive and respectable school spirit tradition
When this event was held at NN, it catered to a particular group of students and other students were quite actively excluded. In addition, even the casual observer witnessed some really nasty behavior.
The days when school sponsored events passively permitted bullying, either through exclusion or active inappropriate behavior, are over. And good riddance to them. The principal did the right thing for the school as a whole.
Jane — Isn’t that a good description of any sports outing?
Seems like a better rally for the Thanksgiving games than the crowning of a homecoming queen.
Not quite sure what you’re referring to, Hoss. That school athletic events involve bullying? That wasn’t my kids’ experience at NN. This event crossed a line at NNHS for years and that’s why it was discontinued. The students involved made it pretty clear who was welcome and who wasn’t. My kids often attended school athletic events when they were in HS, but they knew they weren’t welcome at this event.
Thankfully, homecoming queens have also gone the way of the horse and buggy, but it’s not an either/or situation.
Interesting perspective from two NSHS graduates in their 2008 Denebola article when they were seniors. http://www.nshsdenebola.com/from-the-archive-powderpuff-drops-the-ball-on-feminism/