Talk:Bartlett High School (Alaska)

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Assess[edit]

The scandal gives a mid. If the school had a good set of details then the scandal might go on a different page, but for now it would be a stub without it. Victuallers 00:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sex scandals and vandalism[edit]

There seems to be some disagreement with editors over whether to include the sex scandal & vandalism info in this article. Although it may seem to make for an unbalanced article when the article is this short, I suggest that rather than simply deleting unpleasant but factual information that concerned editors expand other relevant information about the school. On the other hand, including those facts needs verifiable, attributed information, per WP:ATT, and also needs to be NPOV per WP:NPOV. E.g., though both the two teachers were active for a long period of time, I would consider it to be very POV'ish to say the school has a "long history" of such abuse, given that both teachers were very secretive about their behavior, & both were fired as soon as allegations came to life. Does the fact that Satch Carlson was also a columnist at the Anchorage Daily News mean that ADN had a "long history" of employing sex offenders? Hardly.

So... I've moderated some of that language, & also looked up a couple of ADN stories that verify the facts presented about the two teachers. I'll take care of the vandalism story when I get a chance too. --Yksin 23:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Move/rename[edit]

I moved/renamed this article Bartlett High School (Anchorage, Alaska) (the Anchorage, Alaska part is because there are several other schools throughout the U.S. named Bartlett High School). I don't know why anyone ever named it Bartlett-Begich High School in the first place -- I can find no evidence that it was ever called that since it was built in 1971. --Yksin 21:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

its painted on the side of the building....how hard of research did you actually do??? since you changed the name...you should change it back... i uploaded a photo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Outside_school3.jpg - robkehr

Further research supports move/rename to "Bartlett High School (Anchorage, Alaska)"[edit]

A photo does not prove that "Bartlett-Begich High School" is its name. It merely proves that the building has the words "Bartlett" and "Begich" painted on the side of it. My original research was based on the going to the Anchorage School District website:

  • Bartlett High School official website — note it has a copy of a photo showing "Bartlett - Begich" painted on the building's side but still calls the high school "Bartlett High School"
  • "High Schools": official list on ASDonline of Anchorage School District high schools

Further research today finds the following:

  • Search results on ASD website on term "Bartlett High School" — 878 hits on ASD website. Search on term "Bartlett-Begich High School": 0 hits.
  • A search in Newsbank, a subscription archive service of newspapers which includes archives for the Anchorage Daily News back to 1985, retrieves 2258 articles with the search term "Bartlett High School." For the search term "Bartlett-Begich High School": 1 article. For the search term "Bartlett-Begich": 7 articles.
  • A search on Google on search terms "bartlett high school" anchorage gets about 13,500 hits. On search term "bartlett-begich": 95 hits (several of which are to pre-renaming versions of this article or mirrors thereof).

But in support of your assertion that "Bartlett-Begich High School" is its "official" or at least its technical name:

  • Pesznecker, Katie. (2006-09-30). "Muldoon middle school is looking for the right name — Tributes: Educators Begich and Stears are popular figures for a label that could be decided by the School Board Nov. 13." Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved through Newsbank on 2007-05-18. — quote:
Back when city junior and high schools shared buildings, they shared names too -- like Service-Hanshew and Dimond-Mears. As junior highs broke away, names followed them.
The sole exception: Bartlett-Begich. Today that remains the high school's technical name, but the 'Begich was long ago dropped in everyday references. Now supporters say the district should stick to tradition and a pledge made long ago by naming the new school after the deceased congressman.
I met with the committee at the first and last meeting to review the history of the high school/junior high school names. It should be remembered that all of the junior-senior high school complexes in the late sixties and into the early eighties were given two names; one for the junior high school and one for the senior high school. Previous school boards made a decision in the late seventies and early eighties to change all these complexes into high schools, and to build junior high schools as facilities could be constructed; they are now middle schools. In all cases, the names moved with the new buildings: Chugiak-Gruening, East-Benny Benson (now an alternative school), Service-Hanshew, Dimond-Mears, West-Romig, and now, with this recommendation, Bartlett-Begich.
In addition, when the facility now named Benny Benson was being designed, the Begich family was asked if they would prefer to have the facility named after Nick Begich because there was not a junior high school planned at that time or in the near future. It was widely understood by many in the community and in the district that the family asked that the name remain on Bartlett High School until a new junior high school could be built in the northeast Anchorage area where the family lived and continue to live today. They assumed that the Begich name would then be transferred to the new school. The new alternative school then took the name of Benny Benson from the East-Benson complex. In subsequent years, the Begich name has not been used at Bartlett High School on diplomas, official documents, or by the district, and the only remaining remnant of the official name is on the southeast wall of the building. If the School Board accepts my recommendation, and that of the committee, the Begich name will be restored as the name of the middle school in the Muldoon area."

It appears from this that the the "official name" or at least the "technical name" of the school may still be "Bartlett-Begich High School." But even that's not certain, given the Anchorage School Board's decision to name the new middle school, on which construction has been completed and which is due to open this fall, after Begich. I have just put a call in to Superintendent Carol Comeau's office to ask what the "official" name status of Bartlett is now (i.e., if it's even technically any more referred to as "Bartlett-Begich." The person I spoke with is checking into it and will call me back.

Regardless, the name in both common and official ASD usage for years (per Comeau's November memo, on diplomas, official documents, and by the district) has been "Bartlett High School," making it de facto the preferred official name for the high school in its official communications, legal documents, diplomas, etc. Bartlett High School as the name is more hence in accordance with official policy WP:NAME and most definitely aligns better than Bartlett-Begich High School with the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools) which states: "Convention: School article titles should use the full official name of the school as provided by the school itself, unless the most common name for the school is significantly more well known as the name of the school than the official name. If there are other school articles that would have the same name, to disambiguate, the most general location should be added as a qualifier in parenthesis."

Thus, I stand by the move/rename that I did to move this article to Bartlett High School (Anchorage, Alaska). --Yksin 21:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New section in article. I've now added a section on the school's name to the article to reflect the results of my research. --Yksin 22:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Email from Anchorage School District re: name of school[edit]

I said above that I put in a call to Carol Comeau's office about the name of the school. I thought I was going to be called back -- but actually they emailed me at an account I obviously don't use often. Anyway, here's the substance of the message, which came from Judy Michael, Executive Secretary, Office of the Asst. Superintendent of Support Services, Anchorage School District on May 18, 2007:

Thanks for your call earlier today about Bartlett High School’s name.
The name of the high school has always been Bartlett High School. When a middle school was physically housed there, the hyphenated Bartlett-Begich name was used, and a sign indicating that name was mounted on the building.
However, when a junior high/middle school was no longer associated with the high school, use of the hyphenated name ended. The sign on the building was never changed.
With the opening of the Nicholas J. Begich Middle School, the Begich name was chosen to continue to be associated with a middle school.

So the position here seems to be that the school's official name was never "Bartlett-Begich High School." --Yksin 16:52, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Name of the school on my diploma[edit]

I believe on my diploma from Bartlett the name also has "Bob" in it. I will have to dig the diploma out to get the exact name, which I will do tomorrow. I do not think the name of the page should be changed, but perhaps the nickname section should include it, since in the four years I went there, I graduated in 2005, I don't recall ever hearing the school called "B-Town." --Aelyanariah (talk) 13:12, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

School name redux (2019)[edit]

I'm looking at "It's Another $50 Million Building Year In Anchorage" by Rosemary Shinohara, published in the Anchorage Daily Times on December 3, 1971. There are two paragraphs at the end of the story explaining educational building projects in Anchorage. The pertinent part is as follows:

...and the Anchorage Borough School District's new high school, junior high complex, Bartlett-Richardson.

Ze plot thickens! Obviously, this clearly states that the original plan for the school was as a combined senior-junior high, despite what anyone may have commented to the contrary on this page. Furthermore, the Times ran a blurb entitled "Schools To Bear Names Of Begich, Benny Benson" on March 7, 1973, alongside a story about Emil Notti conceding the special election to replace Begich in Congress. That blurb stated the following:

Members of the Greater Anchorage Borough School District took time during their meeting last night to honor two famous Alaskans.

The new junior high school adjacent to Bartlett Senior High was named in honor of Alaska's late Congressman Nick Begich. The junior high presently under construction adjacent to East Anchorage High School was named after Alaskan native Benny Benson.

Benson was raised in the Jesse Lee Home in Seward and designed the state flag. He is the first member of a minority race to have a school named after him in this district

As they say in that one commercial, "But wait, there's more!". The Alaska Educational Directory was published annually by the territorial and state education departments for over three quarters of a century. It should be considered pretty definitive even if scant evidence of its existence can be found online. Basically, it's one of many long-standing print references that were replaced by the state website during the 1990s without its historical body of information being transferred over. I dug up some past editions nonetheless. Here we go:

1973–1974 directory, p. 8,
1974–1975 directory, p. 8,
1975–1976 directory, p. 7
all give the following listing:

Bartlett-Begich Jr.-Sr. High
25-500 N. Muldoon Road
Anchorage, Alaska 99504

The 1976–1977 directory is in a somewhat different format, eminating from data printed off of a mainframe computer (all the rage in state government at the time). It lists "BARTLETT SR HI" with no mention of Begich, but mentions that the school encompassed grades 7 through 12.

So this really isn't new to me, though it may be new to someone who isn't availing themselves of the breadth of sources which exist in the world. The only thing new was the reference to "Bartlett-Richardson" from the 1971 story. I assume Richardson referred to Wilds P. Richardson and that the idea was abandoned in the wake of Begich's untimely death, seeing as how Begich himself had a connection to Fort Richardson. Hope all this helps your understanding of this situation. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 23:41, 16 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sex scandal, redux[edit]

The section on the sex scandal is entirely WP:UNDUE. It is as if that is the only thing that ever happened at the school. Also, WP:BLPCRIME applies to this content. There are three teachers named by name for crimes they were accused of. Only one ever even got time. WP:SCH/AG is fairly clear on the fact that we do not discuss any faculty by name (with the exception of the principal), unless that faculty member rises to the level of notability required to have an article on Wikipedia about them.

From the above, we cannot discuss any individuals by name, as the only one that even got adjudicated plead "no contest", which is not legally a conviction.

I will again be removing it, and I will post at the BLP noticeboard asking for some help on this. This isn't really a matter of content dispute as much as it is a matter of policy violation. I can see some discussion of some of the events, as they led to a change in state law, but all the names have got to go. Wikipedia is not a newspaper (WP:NOTNEWS). It is not meant to be a complete chronicle of everything that ever happened at the school. Instead, an encyclopedia article should provide a referenced overview of the school and its history. All the details will remain in the referencing, we just shouldn't be discussing these events in detail. BLP policies exist to protect Wikipedia from lawsuit and to protect innocent people from being smeared. And I am sorry, but unless someone is convicted of a crime, they are innocent whether they did it or not. That is the law. John from Idegon (talk) 16:23, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

BLP Noticeboard notified Done John from Idegon (talk) 17:26, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Reality check time. Evidently, in the course of your aggressive scouring of (pseudo-)policy to justify deleting something you don't like, you've chosen all these years to ignore the fact that the Satch Carlson case received coverage in The New York Times, a newspaper whose article describes it as possessing "worldwide influence and readership". See here. As I recall the BLPN discussion, there was consensus to remove this due to the presence of strictly local sourcing, with no effort being made by anyone to determine whether other sources existed (hence, the link above). Everywhere else you go across the encyclopedia, the practice is to view any coverage from the NYT as being good as gold, especially if they're covering a story which is local to a community clear across the nation from New York City. So how is that trumped by an incestuous project guideline, one whose page header clearly marks it as an essay and not even a guideline? Between this and other mindless deletions and reversions you've made over the years, this article comes a lot closer to resembling an advertisement for ASD than resembling an encyclopedia entry. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 23:41, 16 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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