However, the article also talks about the aftermath of this. The 'popular' students at the high school then used the app 'Yik Yak' to harass the theater kids for not letting Danny sing. They said very rude remarks about the theater kids even though these theater students had nothing to do with Danny not being able to sing. The Yik Yak thread at Maine South was taken over by this harassment. What is so interesting about this article is that social media is used at both good and bad. The students of this high school were doing a positive social movement by wanting this down syndrome student to sing but on the other hand these students then turned their anger onto the 'unpopular' students in the theater. The virtual relationship between the students at this high school is all on social media which is very dangerous in some ways.
Here is the actual article, give it a read!...
Internet rallies behind Maine South student with Down syndrome
Danny Svachula (left) plays LeFou during the Special Gifts
Theatre production of "Beauty and The Beast" at Skokie School Theater in
March 2013. | File
Thousands of students at Maine South High School took to Facebook and Twitter earlier this week to support a popular classmate with Down syndrome whose solo act didn’t at first make the cut for a spot on a competitive annual variety show.
The story unfolded in less than two days, exposing the power of social media — both to help one student and to cause pain for another group of teenagers, who some believe were bullied on social media for their association with the school’s fine arts department.
More than 1,200 people gathered behind 18-year-old Danny Svachula on social media under #letdannysing by Monday afternoon — a day after the aspiring singer found out he had been cut from the November variety show.
The hashtag #letdannysing spread quickly on Twitter, prompting people across the country to email Maine South principal Shawn Messmer in support of Svachula.
“I had 100 emails from across the country — including from Alaska and Hawaii — asking us to let Danny sing,” Messmer said. “But the assumption about why he wasn’t singing was a false assumption, and the social media aspect has turned it into something it’s not.”
By Monday afternoon, officials at the Park Ridge high school had been swayed to reverse the decision made by a fine arts department committee not to allow Svachula to perform his 90-second solo act.
Svachula — who spent months practicing Aladdin’s “Proud of Your Boy” with a private voice coach — was overjoyed at the news of finally being able to perform on stage during his senior year of high school, according to his mom Diane Svachula.
“Special needs students don’t typically try out for a solo part, so I don’t think the [committee] knew how to handle it,” Svachula said. “The school did the right thing to let him in.”
But the 13 kids on the panel who originally decided not to take Svachula as one of three solo acts in the annual show (called the V-Show) have taken heat — most of it anonymous — from other students. Principal Shawn Messmer says the panel members have been wrongly branded as villains in the situation.
Svachula is a popular student at Maine South, and Messmer said that while the school celebrated his triumph, some students started launching vicious anonymous attacks on students associated with theater and other fine arts groups on the anonymous social media site Yik Yak.
The increasing popularity of Yik Yak among teens has taken cyber-bullying to new heights because it allows anyone to post whatever they want about someone, while keeping their own identity private.
Users can search the site for the most popular, or “trending,” posts nearby, making it easy for rumors to spread fast among high school students.
Messmer said some teens have been targeting the fine arts students — many of whom weren’t even on the committee that didn’t select Svachula — by smearing their reputations and making unfounded claims that they discriminated against a student with special needs.
“The positive aspect is that kids are really supportive of Danny, and if someone thought he was wronged, it doesn’t surprise me that kids would stick up for him,” Messmer said. “But some of the kids in fine arts have been targeted as a whole community, and that aggression is totally unfair and misplaced.”
Svachula was empathetic toward the teens in charge of the auditions, and said the backlash on behalf of her son stemmed from the belief that Danny’s talents — however different from other students — should have a chance to be heard.
“The school runs inclusionary programs for special-needs students, and we thought the variety show should be included,” Svachula said. “Variety means ‘different,’ and I’m not saying someone should lose their spot, but that the door should be opened to one more act.”
Svachula’s voice coach Mary Di Leo Poole has been training him since March, and said it was an “amazing” achievement for him to finally nail an entire 90-second song from memory while holding the notes for the right lengths of time.
“I’m sure no one on the committee would intentionally discriminate against students with special needs, and that they were just trying to make things fair by holding him to the same standards as the other singers,” Di Leo Poole said on Facebook, “but if you look at it in terms of effort, obstacles, progress, and commitment, Danny went beyond the standards of the other singers.”
The Maine South community will have the chance to watch their classmate sing during the V-Show Nov. 20 through 22, but in the meantime, Messmer has an uphill battle against social media.
Yik Yak and other social media outlets are banned from wireless networks at Maine South, but there’s only so much school administrators can do to control what happens after the school day.
Messmer said it was ironic that drama and fine arts students were targeted, because they tend to be more inclusive of students who don’t fit into what he described as the “mainstream popular group.”
“Now we’re demonizing other people, and the real question is, how do you get students to be nicer to each other?” he said. “The good news is that something else will blow up [on Yik Yak] in the next few days that will eclipse this.”
Tags: District 207, Down syndrome, Maine South
-Posted by Jackie O
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