HANNA STRONG IS DOING WELL

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—-By Frederick A. Hurst—-
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I’ve been asked by many people what happened to Hanna Strong. And I am happy to report that she is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances of an unfortunate incident that threw her into the public eye, unfairly branded her as a racist and homophobe and changed her life forever.

Hanna was in her final semester at Syracuse University where she played on the soccer team. She was pretty, popular and outgoing and interacted with friends of all races, mostly from the sports world―and some as roommates―at least two of whom were Black and among her best of friends. And, ironically, it was after a night of partying that led to an argument with her Black ex-boyfriend that precipitated the incident that turned her into one of the most unlikely symbols of White racism and homophobia on the nation’s college campuses.

Hanna was returning home from a night on the town from a local bar when she spotted her ex, who was on the Syracuse University football team, and five other Black football players exiting a second bar. And not so unnaturally, she and her ex got into a spirited “relationship-based” argument over “who knows what” when, to her dismay, one of the other players, whom she did not know, began to film the incident and she turned her wrath on him. And she attacked him with words that could not have been more carelessly chosen, although none of those present seemed to take her words with the seriousness that they soon assumed.

That evening, the anonymous football player who filmed the incident, posted it on the web and, by morning, the posting, which was intended as a joke, had gone viral. At the joint urging of Hanna and her ex, both of whom instantly realized the unintended damage the posting was generating, the photographer deleted the errant posting by 8:00 that morning.

But the swift action was, nonetheless, too late. Whether she deserved it or not, Hanna was thrown to the wolves of political correctness and racial and homophobic righteousness and nothing she did thereafter could calm the storm. She had been sucked up into the eye of a racial and homophobic media storm over which she would be forever helpless to effectively defend.

The reaction was swift and completely out of Hanna’s control. She took a nap and woke up to a stream of hostile emails. It seemed that everybody knew about the video including her soccer coach who took her to the Syracuse public safety department where she was advised to leave campus for safety reasons.

The next day Hanna was contacted by the Syracuse University student affairs department and hit with five different charges. Recognizing the foolishness of her words and the hopelessness of her cause and after two of the charges were dropped, Hanna pled guilty to the remaining three. Her penalty was a semester’s suspension or attendance at an LGBT convention and a once-a week-meeting for a semester with a Black female representative to “open her eyes to the culture” and, of course, she chose the latter since she was so close to graduation.

And the press piled on. Within the week, Hanna gave a voluntary public apology through the “Daily Orange,” which is an independent student newspaper whose alumni work at every major newspaper in the nation. The Daily Orange distorted her words so much that she lost faith in the media. So, when 15 to 20 news outlets from around the country, from the east coast to the west coast, descended on her, she fled in panic to her sister’s home for a week. But her ordeal was far from over.

Hanna returned to campus to more harassment. People would take pictures of her in class and “post” them with negative comments. Her coaches abandoned her. Her friends in the athletic department couldn’t publicly defend her because the coaches “didn’t want the publicity.” She was indefinitely suspended from the soccer team and the contents of her locker were sent to her through a Black teammate, Maya, her roommate and good friend whom she still occasionally travels with.

Most of the harassment came from people who did not know her. It went on and on and on until she finally graduated. They whispered about her, took photos of her and posted derogatory remarks around campus and often confronted her directly with unkind references. In contrast, Hanna received plenty of support from people who knew her, especially among her teammates and others in the “athletic family.” One Black football player sent her daily notes of support and she still treasures his favorites saying, “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.” And many Syracuse staff wrote the administration defending her character and urging that she not be punished. The sports law professor, who was a major advisor, volunteered to defend her. And even the soccer coaches, who had initially abandoned her, reached out to her within a month of the incident, although the bitter residue of their earlier abandonment when she needed them the most, continues to make her wonder out loud how, knowing her true character, they could have behaved that way toward her when they readily defended players “accused of rape and drugs.”
Nonetheless, it was a lonely time for a young woman from the tiny town of Monson, Massachusetts, who had no history of racial or homophobic intolerance and whose everyday behavior suggests that she was closer to being a model of enlightenment, which is why Hanna still puzzles, at times tearfully, over the unlikely chain of events that seem to have altered her life forever. Why that night in that fateful moment she uttered an unacceptable racial and homophobic rebuke to an unwanted interloper is something she still can’t explain. All she could say is that “I would say I wasn’t thinking…I was caught up in the moment.”

Indeed! And if that moment had gone unrecorded and un-posted and out of the range of the millions sharing cyberspace, that moment would have dissipated into the stratosphere without consequence. The entire incident would have been written off by the invisible hand of fate as a nonevent and Hanna Strong’s life would have continued on its course but for the impact of technology on how we as humans have begun to relate to each other.

It is a peculiar thing, this cyber technology. It offers little room for discretion and flouts due process with such ease. The accused is guilty in cyberspace until proven innocent and most often given little opportunity for defense or to explain extenuating circumstances or to place her true character in context. The cyber mob is judge, jury and executioner all in one. A cyber conviction is all but irreversible. It carries no possibility of pardon or commutation. And the punishment is unending as Hanna Strong discovered after graduating from Syracuse University scarred but hoping that her punishment was over and she could continue with her life as a duly chastened and wiser person.

And Hanna was prepared to move on even before she left campus. She had come to terms with events. She had accepted the fact that she had made a serious mistake for which she had learned a hard lesson and she was determined to move on with her life with her head held high and to embrace her friends and ignore her detractors. She allowed herself to believe the storm would pass. But her optimism went unrewarded.

After graduation from Syracuse and a brief time in Atlanta, Hanna returned to her parent’s home in Monson, and took a rewarding job in the Springfield Public School system as a long-term sub, teaching third and fourth grade students requiring special attention at Indian Orchard Elementary School. She was still within the probationary period and enjoying her blossoming career as an educator when the local NAACP president brought Hanna’s cyberspace story to the attention of Springfield’s mayor and school superintendent in a letter that demanded action against Hanna.

Without even the slightest investigation, Hanna was given the choice of resignation or termination. She chose to resign under the impression that if she did, the matter would remain private. She had no way of knowing that the NAACP president had forwarded a copy of his communication to the media, which printed an article with a slant that all but assumed her guilt. Her humiliation was compounded by the fact that the negotiations for her termination were conducted through her mother, who was a long-time employee of the Springfield school system. Not a single one of her new detractors spoke directly to her.

Although Hanna seems to have handled the new exposé well, as did her family and friends who offered her “solid support,” Hanna still wonders if not fighting her termination was the right thing, but she was understandably reluctant to repeat the public humiliation of the past and chose to simply move on even though she received job offers that would have kept her in the Springfield area and even though she received none of the thousands of negative emails and affronts that hounded her at Syracuse.

And Hanna didn’t bother to traverse the web to see the cyber reaction from the NAACP president or others “… who didn’t know what they were talking about but were quick to judge.” Instead, she went to Florida for a month, bought a puppy, and called her dad to tell him she was coming home with a 9 pound cross between a lab and Great Dane named Lincoln who is currently 50 pounds and growing fast. And some months later she called me for a promised follow-up interview following an article I had written after meeting her and her father, Drew Strong, in my office (POV June 1, 2016).

And to the folks who have asked me how Hanna is doing, I am happy to report that Hanna Strong seems to be doing quite well, thank you. She is a genuine free spirit who is truly at peace with herself. She and a friend moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a tourist haven, where she has secured temporary employment in the hospitality industry while giving herself time to ponder her long-term career plans. She’s in no rush. It’s “like being on vacation,” she says. And it’s 45 minutes from Boston and a short distance from beaches and snowy mountains, where she practices her favorite winter sport of snowboarding. And she’ll be coaching soccer with her sister who lives in the area.

To talk with Hanna is to know that she is a strong survivor with a great future that she will follow on her own terms unfazed by a cyber storm that would have destroyed a weaker soul. She won’t be forcing the issue of a career in education or any other profession. At 23 years old she is going to wisely take time to relax, heal and let life take its course, which is exactly what she should do.
But Hanna has left us all with a few serious questions to ponder that I’ll leave to the readers’ imaginations. I can honestly say that I get no satisfaction out of the perpetual punishment inflicted on Hanna Strong for a youthful mistake. For me, her story simply drives home the fact that some may have lost the “moral clarity” that drove the Civil Rights movement and kept it on track. And Hanna was victimized by the loss.
And that is unfortunate. ■

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