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understand.”
More messages were directed at the athletes
and referred to them as “bush boogie,” “mon-
key,” and “n-word in the bushes.”
Racism on Twitter is nothing new, from high
school students to politicians (Minnesota
House Republican Rep. Pat Garofalo apolo-
gized Tuesday for tweeting on Monday: “Let’s
be honest, 70% of teams in NBA could fold
tomorrow + nobody would notice a difference
w/possible exception of increase in street-
crime.”)
At the same time the racist tweets were fly-
ing in Washington State last week, a high
school basketball semi-final game in New
York erupted in a brawl after students at
calls for high schools to acknowledge the phe-
nomenon and act to cut it off.
Such race-based cyberbullying has been
associated with teen suicide, depression and
poor academic achievement, according to Uni-
versity of Southern California Associate Pro-
fessor Brendesha Tynes, PhD.
Tynes, armed with a $1.5 million National
Institutes of Health grant, is pioneering a new
field of educational research on the topic at the
USC Rossier School of Education. It is a sub-
ject she has studied since 2001.
“We know about cyberbullying in general,
but we’ve just scratched the surface of under-
standing how different types of victimization,
including race-related experiences, impact
‘We’ve just scratched the surface of understanding
how different types of victimization, including race-
related experiences, impact developing
adolescents’
Mahopac High School – as well as adult fans
of the team – reportedly sent racist tweets dur-
ing the game slamming students at Mount Ver-
non. Mount Vernon won the match; the district
superintendent there is calling for Mahopac to
be banned from the sport for a year.
An interactive map of hate speech on Twitter,
created by students at Humboldt State Univer-
sity in California, shows that under the catego-
ry of tweets “negatively referring to N-word,”
the Seattle area as well as Gray’s Harbor –
along with Southern Idaho – appear to be the
only red-coded “hotspots” in the Northwest.
http://users.humboldt.edu/mstephens/hate/hate
_map.html#
A rise in hate speech among teenagers after
the election of President Barack Obama led to
developing adolescents,” she said in an inter-
view on the Rossier webpage last year.
“I’m hoping that, because many Internet
safety and antibullying programs don’t really
address race, we can develop interventions to
help youth protect themselves, and give them
coping and antiracist strategies to use,” she
said. “We need more programs to help youth
counter the negative messages they’re getting
about racial groups.”
Back in Seattle last Friday night, Garfield
was not intimidated.
The Bulldogs were neck and neck against the
Eagles in a scrappy match that wasn’t over
until the final seconds of the game, when
Issaquah missed its last shot.
The two schools’ sports rivalry – Garfield
AP PHOTO/THE NEWS TRIBUNE, DEAN J. KOEPFLER
continued from page 1
Garfield coach Ed Haskins thanks fans for
their support after his team defeated
Richland 68-59 in the boys’ 4A state
championship
basketball
game
Saturday, March 8, in Tacoma, Wash.
was ranked number one in the league and
Issaquah tenth – has slowly grown over the
season, inspiring what some students called
over-the-top aggressive verbal assaults unlike
the usual competitive banter between rivals.
The principal of Issaquah High School told
reporters last week that the students involved
were disciplined, but the school is not identify-
ing them.
As of this week Twitter had disabled the
@issybros account, and a quick search for the
word brought up a raft of counter insults
against the racist students.
Meanwhile last week, @IssaquahRefs, post-
ed a tweet distancing themselves from the
racist students.
“Group of sophomores at our school, had
nothing to do with us,” @IssaquahRefs tweet-
ed before the big game on March 7.
The DICK’S Sporting Goods High School
National Tournament, April 3-5 in New York
City, will be televised on ESPN.
Lockout
continued from page 1
findings, which were first reported by The
Oregonian. A National Labor Relations Board
administrative law judge will hear the matter
June 30 in Portland. For now, non-union work-
ers continue to operate the export terminal, and
the two sides continue to negotiate a new con-
tract.
“These disputes can linger on for quite a
while and often end up being settled when an
agreement is reached by the bargaining parties,
rather than the completion of a long and liti-
gious process,” United Grain spokesman Pat
McCormick said Friday.
Separately, Hooks said the longshoremen
violated labor law by engaging in threats and
violence in the early months of the lockout.
For example, he said, picketers threw rocks at
a security officer and threatened to rape a man-
ager's daughter. An administration law judge
will hear that matter July 21.
The twin cases result from allegations of
unfair labor practices swapped by the sides last
year.
The conflict started after the last labor con-
tract expired Sept. 30, 2012. It began to boil
three months later, when United Grain and two
other Pacific Northwest grain terminals
and illegal, and they established a picket line at
the Port of Vancouver.
Union spokeswoman Jennifer Sargent
declined to comment on those allegations, pre-
ferring to focus on the lockout itself.
‘These disputes can linger on for quite a while and
often end up being settled when an agreement is
reached by the bargaining parties, rather than the
completion of a long and litigious process’
declared an impasse and enforced a contract
that included new, management-friendly work-
place rules.
United Grain imposed the lockout after
determining a worker shoved a metal pipe into
a conveyor and poured sand into a gear box.
Longshoremen said the response was extreme
“Once the lockout is found to be illegal,
ILWU workers will resume their jobs in the
grain terminal and be awarded back pay,” she
said. “We’re obviously looking forward to that
outcome.”
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press
Health
continued from page 1
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“Customers may enroll by 11:59 p.m. on
March 23 for coverage effective April 1, 2014
or by 11:59 p.m. on March 31 for coverage
effective May 1, 2014,” the agency said in a
statement Tuesday.
A federal government report issued this week
– with outdated information only covering
signups as of Dec. 31, 2013 – found Oregon is
tied for last nationally in terms of young peo-
ples’ enrollment at 18 percent, a key indicator
of whether the new health system will work.
Washington has done better, the report
shows, with 23 percent of overall signups com-
Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner March 12, 2014
The federal government is investigating Cover
Oregon’s spending
ing from the 18 to 34 age bracket.
The national average is 25 percent of
enrollees in the youthful age bracket.
In a related story, Republicans in Congress
have successfully pushed the General
Accounting Office to investigate how Oregon
spent $304 million in federal grant money to
develop its failed online enrollment system; an
unknown number of other states might be
included in the scrutiny as well.
For more information go to www.wahealth-
planfinder.org, www.coveroregon.com, or
www.healthcare.gov. In Washington State, you
can also call the Customer Support Center at 1-
855-923-4633.