It seems the Washoe County School District has found itself entangled in a peculiar scientific discovery—namely, that vibrations in the air arranged into words by the voice of one Vanessa Bowie-Middleton were of such an unsettling nature that they rendered some fine folks wholly unable to endure their workday in peace.
Ms. Bowie-Middleton, a kitchen worker of respectable standing, was informed in 2022 that her voice, being unmistakably her own, had the unfortunate effect of disturbing the delicate constitutions of educators at Bohach Elementary School. To rectify this shocking phenomenon, she was prohibited from using the cafeteria’s public address system or even verbally correcting wayward children, lest the fabric of pedagogical tranquility get torn asunder.
The restriction, curiously, applied only to her and not to any other cafeteria worker—an oversight one might have expected the district’s “investigators” to notice before they confidently declared there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing. After a generous seven-month interval—perhaps the precise length required to forget common sense—the district magnanimously allowed Ms. Bowie-Middleton to resume speaking as freely as any other lunchroom worker.
Faced with this absurdity, Ms. Bowie-Middleton pursued a federal discrimination lawsuit, which was resolved with a $60,000 settlement. Her attorney, Terri Keyser-Cooper, expressed astonishment that such an indignity was even possible in the year 2022, likening it to the sort of segregationist nonsense one might have assumed had been discarded alongside other relics of institutionalized lunacy.
For her part, Ms. Bowie-Middleton has taken her talents to Mendive Middle School, where one hopes her voice is received with no more astonishment than is ordinarily afforded to a person. Whether the afflicted ears of Bohach Elementary recovered from their ordeal remains unknown.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
Leave a comment