Tuesday, February 29, 2000
Madeira teacher quits over racial harassment
Claims school didn't fully investigate
BY SARA J. BENNETT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MADEIRA — The voice recorded on French teacher Jean-Robert Cadet's school voice mail is a sinister male whisper.
Jean-Robert Cadet
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“You little n-----,” the voice says.
The message is one of several Mr. Cadet says he received in the past six months.
The Haitian-born teacher has resigned after four years at Madeira's junior-senior high school. He claims the school district didn't vigorously investigate his complaints of harassment, as well as racial epithets written on his blackboard.
Administrators disagree. Racial harassment isn't tolerated at Madeira, Superintendent Michele Hummel said. The district used its zero-tolerance policy, which bans any type of intimidation, to punish a student who made a joke bomb threat last year.
Madeira officials said they didn't know about the voice mails until Mr. Cadet's resigna tion last week. They are working with police to trace the latest message, Dr. Hummel said. And if other teachers or students have been intimidated at school because of race, they should come forward so the district can address the problem.
But Mr. Cadet, 45, who is nationally known for writing a book about his experiences as a child slave in Haiti, says more should have been done before he resigned.
And students say he'll be missed.
“He was my favorite teacher,” said Ronit Cohen, a 15-year-old sophomore who said she had heard some students call Mr. Cadet names.
“There's a lot of teachers who care, but he cared a lot,” she said. “I'm really disappointed that he left.”
In a district of 1,500 students, only 2 percent to 3 percent are minorities, Dr. Hummel said. The same percentage applies to the district's 106 teachers.
The district tries to teach students about diversity, not just among races, but among religions and people with physical disabilities, Dr. Hummel said.
Still, Mr. Cadet said some students have made race an issue since he started teaching history and French at Madeira in 1996. The harassment escalated this year, he said.
Racial epithets were written on his blackboard. Mr. Cadet also claims students told him to go back to Africa. He says he heard minority students called names as well.
When he spoke to administrators about his blackboard, Mr. Cadet said he was told to lock his classroom door. He said the students he accused of calling him names went undisciplined.
“If the administration takes no action, they are condoning this behavior,” Mr. Cadet said.
Administrators said they investigated Mr. Cadet's complaints about disrespectful treatment from students and the slurs on his blackboard but could not identify a culprit.
Dr. Hummel said she told Mr. Cadet to lock his door because the number of students in the hallways during lunch and passing periods made it difficult to catch someone going into his classroom.
The district is working with police and the telephone company to trace the single voice mail message that Mr. Cadet preserved. Investigators determined that it was phoned in on a Saturday afternoon, Feb. 19, said school Principal Christopher Mate.
“This is not right, and it needs to be addressed,” Dr. Hummel said of the racist messages. She added that she recalled no similar harassment in her five years with the district.
“I've never had a minority student come and raise an issue, and I've never had a minority parent raise an issue,” she said. “Do I believe that isolated incidents happen? Yes, I do, but nobody felt it was so pervasive that they contacted me.”
Thomas and Sally Cuni, parents of one of Mr. Cadet's students, said they plan to send a letter asking the superintendent and school board members for an explanation. Mr. Cuni said administrators should have told the student body that racial harassment will not be tolerated.
“There's just a crying need to step forward and do something,” he said.
Pat Gentile, president of Madeira's school board, said the district will investigate fully.
“We have all types of harassment policies and intolerance policies, and that's one thing we take very seriously,” he said. “We're not a community that buries their head in anything. We deal with things, and we intend to deal with this as well.”
Ronit Cohen said Mr. Mate spoke with students on Monday to answer questions about Mr. Cadet's resignation.
Ruth Cohen, Ronit's mother, also said she spoke with administrators and is certain that any racial problems at Madeira will be addressed.
“I feel confident the administration is paying attention to this and is going to deal with it in a confident and thorough manner,” she said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cadet plans to substitute teach in another district and work on new translations of his book. A substitute will teach his class for the rest of the school year.
“I'm sad (about leaving),” Mr. Cadet said. “I don't want to go to a job where I'm paid to listen to "nigger.' It's time for the students and administration at Madeira to open their eyes to diversity. Society is not a reflection of Madeira.”
Mr. Cadet wrote a 1998 book, Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American, about his childhood as a poor child given to a wealthy family as a servant in hopes that he would have a better life.
Restavec is a Haitian Creole term that means “staying with.”
His wife is a teacher at Madeira High School and his stepdaughter is a student there. Both are white and have not been harassed, he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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