Hazelbrook Middle School in Tualatin evacuated its students and staff Friday after threats of violence against the school community sparked by a viral video of one student brutally assaulting an unsuspecting classmate in the hallways.
Bomb threats were made against the homes of school and district staffers and city officials, and threats also were made about a school shooting, prompting the closure, said Tigard-Tualatin School District spokeswoman Traci Rose. The threats came via social media and email, she said.
The video of the assault exploded on social media this week after being picked up by right-wing commentators, who concluded based on clothing and appearance in the video – but without confirmation – that the perpetrator is transgender.
The video was shared on social media by former competitive swimmer Riley Gaines, who has campaigned against the participation of transgender women in women’s sports. The post on X, formerly known as Twitter, has been viewed more than 10 million times.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Thursday on the assault and viral video.
Under federal privacy laws, the school district cannot comment on a student’s gender identity, Rose said.
The alleged assailant is now under investigation for criminal-assault charges, according to the Tualatin Police Department.
By Thursday evening, the national din on social media had grown loud enough that the members of the Tigard-Tualatin school board released a joint statement about the sharing of the video, pointing out that those shown in it have not consented to its dissemination.
The video’s spread, said the statement, has inspired “false information and a focus and discourse on sexual identity. These acts have contributed to the trauma individuals and families are already experiencing.”
The incident has also sparked a conversation in the district about disciplinary policies. By Friday, a petition was circulating among parents calling for stricter and swifter consequences for student violence, particularly for repeat offenders.
That discussion came after a second video surfaced online that showed the same student shoving another girl to the ground without any apparent provocation. The video shows a third student trying to intervene, and the perpetrator swings at her too, then gets her on the ground and hits her repeatedly. The fighting ends after an adult’s voice is heard, causing the instigator to back away.
Rieke-Smith, the school superintendent, said that second incident, which she acknowledged looked “horrific” in the grainy video circulating on social media, had been addressed by the principal and her staff at Hazelbrook.
“Now that [the second video] has come to this office’s attention, I too am concerned about a repeated pattern and all the pieces around that,” Rieke-Smith said. " I have to get more information from the school so I can understand that incident, how it was investigated and how it relates to the [other] one. That is the work that is ahead of me.”
Rieke Smith defended the district’s progressive discipline policies, which stress helping students learn to recover from their mistakes, particularly for minor behavior violations, which can include bullying and physical contact that doesn’t rise to the level of an assault.
“Zero tolerance is antithetical to our work as educators,” she said Friday. “If it is safe for the victim and the school community as a whole to extend an opportunity for the student to relearn different behavior, that is what we do.”
At the same time, she said, once behavior escalates to a clear assault, “there is no tolerance for that. That is an immediate referral to law enforcement and that is what happened” in the case of the incident that went viral.
— Julia Silverman, @jrlsilverman, jsilverman@oregonian.com