Marlon Anderson Fired From Madison West High School After Conflict Confuses Context [EDITORIAL]

Maybe the final decision to hire or fire someone from their position at Madison West shouldn’t fall directly to one person, the superintendent. If a board reversed the decision to fire Marlon Anderson, it seems likely that some more contextual and diverse thinking would have kept Anderson from being fired in the first place.

After using the n-word in an attempt to open dialogue with an unruly student who was calling Anderson the n-word, the school’s “zero tolerance” policy towards racial slurs dictated that Anderson should lose his job. After immense public support by students, staff, and Madison citizens, the district gave Anderson his job back.

If the school had acted more and reacted less, Anderson would have and never should have lost his job. Due to the erroneous rules set by the school board immensely affecting his life, Anderson should also receive back pay for the time that he was out of his job.

School Board President Gloria Reyes, told the Wisconsin State Journal “as we experienced a series of racial slurs last school year, we had to take a stand — that we would unequivocally protect students from harm.” This is, of course, related to the “zero-tolerance” policy they put in place. This policy has resulted in at least seven employees losing their jobs. The important thing to note about that is that each of those seven employees is white. Marlon Anderson and the student in question are both black. The “zero-tolerance” policy put in place was made by the ex-superintendent of Madison West, Jennifer Cheatham, who is also white. The policy outlived her and was still enforced by interim superintendent Jane Belmore – another white woman. The hiring and firing of employees is a responsibility that falls directly on the superintendent.

Part of the power dynamic here may be the history of white people making decisions that affect black people’s lives and livelihoods. While a “zero tolerance” policy may not seem so bad, part of the issue is that it only considers the perceived ideas of the white woman that made it. What gives the superintendent alone, the ultimate power to decide whether or not the usage of a word is okay? Especially a word so rife with racial stress, and that, in socially-aware policy, wouldn’t be used or policed by solely a white woman. This is why a zero-tolerance policy cannot be fair.

Anderson is known in the community for his empathy and connection to his students and other members of the community. After he was fired from Madison West, the local Boys & Girls club took him on while he appealed his firing. An organization that exclusively works on supporting teens saw him fit to work with them despite his use of the n-word.

Context and reaction are key to this issue. The school should have recognized that Anderson saw his conversation with the student going nowhere. The school should have recognized that Anderson is an employee trusted and valued by student and staff – so much so almost 1,500 of them marched in protest to his firing. The school and its superintendents should have recognized their policy was inadequate.

There may have been other ways for Anderson to have deescalated the situation he was in, but his usage was not harmful. Reyes specifically mentioned the policy was to prevent harm to the students. As it stands, Anderson did not speak to cause harm but to teach the student a more respectful way to communicate with him. Precedent had been set by the other seven white employees fired, but maybe those could have been avoided had the school embraced more conversation about varieties of appropriate conduct, context, and expectations of the staff.