Ms. Sikyang needs to apologize

This letter is to refute some of the comments made by Ms. Nariany Sikyang about Hopwood Jr. H.S. in the front page article of the Marianas Variety of Jan. 20, 2005.
I will address the section of the article that begins with a quote attribute to Sikyang on page 2, column five. She says, “It was so crowded that I sat (at the end of the room) They were telling me that I should sit there. It was so crowded that I sat (where there was an available space)…Are they psychologists that they know what my body language says?” Readers please note that the parentheses and ellipsis were contained in the article as part of the direct quote.

I was at the meeting and this is the way I saw it. When I came into the room that morning for a leadership meeting Ms. Nancy Nielsen, school librarian, was seated at the end of a long table facing the west wall of the room. Across from here all seats were taken. I sat down one chair away from Ms. Nielsen, which left three chairs to my immediate right and one to my left open for anyone to sit in.

When Ms. Sikyang came in shortly thereafter she sat down at a chair nearest the door and as far away from the group as she possibly could have. Ms. Nielsen called her nicely, twice I might add, and said, “Come Ms. Sikyang join the group, we’re having a round table discussion.” I added. “It’s called group participation.” Mr. Brewer subsequently also asked her twice in polite and professional manner to join the group. Ms. Sikyang remained in her chosen seat looking away from the group and did so for the duration of the meeting. She was staring up at the ceiling for most of the entire meeting with a blank look on her face.

Yes indeed readers—no one present at that meeting needed to be a psychologist or to have ever even taken a psychology course to see that she [Sikyang] was very emphatically NOT participating in the meeting and in fact turning away from the entire group.

I will, however, use a Latin phrase familiar to both psychologists and educators to describe her demeanor that morning. The phrase is non compis menis, meaning “not in the right mind.”

Any person in the room could see that she entered the room in a somewhat disturbed and agitated state of some sort and obviously did not wish to participate with or join the group in any way. For Mr. Brewer to have done nothing about this rude, aberrant and indefensible behavior would have been detrimental to the group dynamic as a whole and ignore the very purpose and function of the entire leadership team.

I feel Ms. Sikyang owes Mr. Brewer and all those present a sincere apology for her behavior at that meeting and now needs to correct her false and misleading statements to the press and the community at large.

I was reluctant to enter this fray and personally think this was and is a personnel matter best dealt with out of the press.

To this date I never seen the so-called ‘letter of concern’, don’t know who the signers were or who the several others that requested anonymity and countered her claims in the media were. I agree with statements made in the press by both BOE chair Roman Benavente and PSS Associate Commissioner David Borja and feel we teachers and counselors alike should tend to the business of educating students.

Joe Connolly,
HJHS teacher and Koblerville resident