Explaining an editor's note and a unique bullying court case.

An editor’s note about the editor’s note you’ll find on the opening page of this week’s cover story, about the sudden rise (and, if parents and local school administrators have their way) hopeful fall of the smartphone app Ogle.

Like many adults, I hadn’t heard of Ogle until late February, with the news a Pacific Grove High School student used the app to threaten to blow up Carmel High, a dumb move that has altered the course of his life. If his parents have resources (and not all P.G. parents do, as much as we all like to joke about life in the rarefied air of Pagrovia), they are spending a lot of money on an attorney to try to prevent the kid from spending time in juvenile hall.

You don’t need Ogle to make such a threat. But the app makes it easy for kids to cloak themselves in anonymity and say things they might not say if they had to put their names to it. You can fake an identity online using most any service around; Ogle is different because there’s no fakery needed – anonymity is assured – and it’s aimed at high-school and college students.

I downloaded the app to see what it was about. I’m mostly unshockable, but I have to admit, there was some shocking stuff on it. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, directed at classmates, students at other schools, teachers and administrators. We took screenshots of some of what we saw – some contain harsh language – and used them to illustrate the story.

They provide context for the larger story that many of you may not have heard.

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Harsh language also follows here, in the second part of this column, about an unusual trial going on right now in Monterey Superior Court.

“S is a bitch.” “S should die.”

You might expect that kind of language from teens. But in this case, S – the first initial of the girl at the heart of the trial – was 9 years old when the words appeared as graffiti on a bathroom stall at Washington Union Elementary School. And those words are at the heart of the lawsuit filed in 2012 on her behalf, alleging the school knew S was being bullied, and that a teacher and administrator participated.

Trial in the case began this week in Monterey Superior Court. Because of court scheduling, the trial will break midway through, as this paper goes to press, then resume Monday.

S was an interdistrict transfer student from the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, and she had been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder while in kindergarten. She needed an orderly, rule-following world, and when the family could no longer afford private Christian school tuition, they sought the transfer to the Washington Union School District.

Things went well for a time, but the medication S takes for OCD made her overweight, and kids began to tease her. They called her fat, ugly and smelly.

And S tried to stand up for herself. Classmates accused her of pushing them, ordering them around and being mean. Bad conduct reports accumulated, endangering her transfer status.

One teacher tried to solve the problem, and now finds himself defending his actions in court. He conducted a classroom exercise in which students in S’s class were allowed to say “I like it when” and “I don’t like it when.” Much of the conversation centered on negatives about S. Defense attorney Mark Davis called the exercise a “unique conflict resolution session.” S’s attorney, Debra Tipton, calls it organized cruelty.

The graffiti appeared sometime after. School policy says a bathroom stall that’s been defaced by graffiti should be cleaned the same day, or as quickly as possible if the janitor needs special equipment. In this case, the lawsuit claims, the principal knew the graffiti was there but left it up for weeks.

S is now an 8th grader at a school on the Peninsula, earns A’s, has friends and lives with OCD. She was expelled from Washington in 2012 after a little girl accused S of choking her; I’m told that little girl has or will recant that during the trial.

District Superintendent Kevin Vaughn couldn’t comment on the suit, but emailed that the district values and fosters safe school environments that protects students from physical and emotional harm.

In S’s case, at least, that will be up to a jury to decide.

MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com