What happened at Great Valley Middle School? Inside the online harassment campaign
The Great Valley School District serves roughly 5,000 students from Malvern Borough as well as Charlestown, East Whiteland and Willistown townships.
The seventh and eighth graders, who launched the social media attack, created fake TikTok accounts impersonating their teachers. According to the New York Times, the students “posted disparaging, lewd, racist and homophobic videos.”
“I do give our middle school administrative team a lot of kudos for the hours, days and even weeks that they put into investigating trying to uncover who the perpetrators were,” Superintendent Dr. Daniel Goffredo told WHYY’s “Studio 2.” “Upon after a few days — learning that it was in fact middle school students, we reached out to our community. We made sure our parents were aware.”
Goffredo said “wounds” were inflicted upon his teachers.
School officials said they’re limited to the extent by which they can punish students. While many of the accounts have since been deleted, the Inquirer reported that the summer has brought the creation of new dummy profiles.
Cristina Hartley, co-president of the Great Valley Middle School PTO, told “Studio 2” that the incidents have cast a shadow over the district.
“These actions have caused a lot of stress on families like mine who respect the teachers and the administration and now the entire district is viewed through the actions of a few students who made very poor decisions and the lack of parenting,” Hartley said.
Like Salvatico, Hartley expressed a desire for collaboration amongst parents, teachers and administrators in and out of the classroom.
“Families need to work with the school and there are rules that we need to impose on our children at home and control what they do on social media,” Hartley said. “Not a free-for-all.”