Friday (Short) Stories on The Goldenrod

Announcing our new food and drink labor writer + school leadership (or lack thereof) during Hazard High School's Homecoming Week.

Let’s start off this Friday edition with a *drumroll please* announcement…

Last month, we put out a hiring call for a food and drink labor writer to join the team here at The Goldenrod and carve out a unique beat covering rural labor issues in food, beverage, dining, distilleries, agriculture, candy factories—you name it—across Central and Eastern Kentucky.

I’m thrilled to announce today that seasoned foodways reporter Michelle Eigenheer will be coming on board in that capacity, and working to fill a major coverage gap in Kentucky’s small towns and rural areas. As we all are probably aware, there are just as many food and drink workplace issues in our communities as in the “big cities” but—until now—most local newspapers have not had the journalistic bandwidth to cover them.

Michelle Eigenheer, The Goldenrod’s (new!) food and drink labor writer

Here are a few getting-to-know-you questions with Michelle so you can learn a little bit more about her:

How did you originally become interested in writing about foodways? 
My first professional job in media required me to write a lot about trendy cocktails and new restaurant openings. I didn't love business reporting, but I did love hearing chefs talk about the connections their recipes and ingredients had to a sense of place, provenance or tradition. I loved learning about bourbon not as a tourism industry, but an agricultural one, and asking deeper questions behind seemingly simple food stories. As that interest grew, I found myself spending more time reporting from farms than restaurant openings, and I am glad for it. 

How did growing up in rural Kentucky impact your relationship to (and understanding of) storytelling?
My love of storytelling definitely started with my dad, who was a fount of tales about his upbringing in the rural Midwest. But around the same time that I started to recognize his big fish stories, I also began to understand the complicated narratives in local news. I began to understand when details were left out of the big story that would later be shared in gas station dining rooms where my friends' fathers and grandfathers gathered for breakfast before heading back to their farms. That's when I learned to keep listening, even if you think you've heard this one before.

What's one area of the Kentucky food and beverage industry you're particularly excited to shine a light on from a labor perspective? 
Kentucky's role in the labor movement is as old as the commonwealth itself. But our oldest industries have changed dramatically in this time—sometimes evolving faster than public policy or perception. I look forward to digging into the ways agriculture, food and beverage are moving forward, while also taking a critical look at the engrained challenges that workers face along the way.

In your opinion, why is it important—in the year 2021—to create a beat specifically devoted to food and drink labor issues in Kentucky? 
Kentucky takes such pride in industries like bourbon, and we have such a deep bench of people who are cultivating unique cuisine, business models, growing practices and solutions for feeding their communities. But 2020 really revealed the fragility of our food systems, the conditions agricultural workers operate under, and how quickly the rug can be pulled out from under all the people who have a hand in feeding us, from field to fork. In 2021, restaurants, farms, manufacturers and workers are still trying to recover—all while workers in bourbon distilleries and beyond demand fundamental changes to how these industries operate and compensate workers. Documenting these moves, and examining the systems that shape this moment, is a vital part of the state's recovery.

Welcome, Michelle! And as always, feel free to send any tips, leads or story thoughts to thegoldenrodnews@gmail.com.

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“Just because it is tradition doesn’t make it right.”

Earlier this week, Hazard High School’s Homecoming Week became the center of shock and deep concern on social media when photos from a school-sanctioned event dubbed the “man pageant” revealed high school boys dressed in lingerie grinding on adult members of the faculty and staff—one of whom, Principal Donald "Happy" Mobelini, is also the mayor of Hazard—as well as high school girls dressed as Hooters waitresses carrying fake mugs of beer and, yes, even simulated student paddling. All of this, unbelievably, took place in front of an audience of students in the school’s gymnasium.

“That” Nema @nema

Um. Exactly what is going on here, y’all? C’mon Hazard. Get it together. 🤦🏼‍♀️

There’s been plenty of reporting about the event and its shockwaves—here, here and here are good places to start, if you’re unfamiliar—but what’s particularly worrying to me is Hazard Independent Schools’ lack of willingness to take true responsibility for this obviously unacceptable tradition.

For starters, when the story initially broke, the school district’s response—via board chairman Ralph “Butch” Asher—was that they could not comment on whether or not it was an annual event, even though that’s a fairly simple point to prove and it has now has been documented through multiple accounts (including the one below).

Screenshot from a Reddit thread about the “man pageant” (10/27/21)

There was an immediate circling of the wagons, particularly around Principal Mobelini—who students often simply refer to as “Happy”—even though he’s currently a defendant in a lawsuit filed by a former student who said she was sexually assaulted in a hotel room by a classmate during a junior class trip in 2017 where Mobelini was a chaperone. (Among other statements, he allegedly told the student that it “was all her fault.”) A rally was even held in downtown Hazard last night in support of the principal/mayor.

"I was just informed the school isn’t wanting to comment at all so I’m gonna revoke that…and stay silent as well,” a Hazard High School graduate told me via Twitter direct message moments after agreeing to speak about the issue. “I’d just like to let you know there’s good reason Happy is so loved within our community.”

And while there seems to be a great deal of concern for how the negative attention cast on this event will poorly reflect on the school, what reflects much worse in the long run is district leadership refusing to stare at the issue, clear-eyed, and take accountability. This tapdancing around the truth and desire to seemingly gloss over a major issue with platitudes and misdirection is perhaps most evident in Superintendent Sondra Combs’ official statement released Wednesday night about the “man pageant”, which doubles-down on this year’s “festivities” as an outlier because “there has never been any issue raised prior to this year” while also trying to blame-shift to students. (Read the full statement here.)

Repeatedly calling an event that took place during school hours, on school property and involving teachers, administrators and staff “student-led” is unbelievable, full stop. Are students in charge of scheduling events? Was it some sort of high school student mutiny where they overpowered the adults in the situation and forced the “man pageant” to happen? Of course not, but Superintendent Combs subtlety paints it as both the students’ fault and responsibility to atone for. Among other lines:

I found photos of inappropriate student-led activities that had since surfaced on social media.

The activities were part of Homecoming festivities and were driven by the students. We strive to foster creativity in our students, but unfortunately, this time it was carried too far.

We will continue to seek to involve our students and foster their creativity, but with more direction. They are young and we will be there to offer better guidance for their ideas in the future.

Using this as a teachable moment, we will provide social media training for our students and staff. In today’s society students must understand that anything posted online is permanent! It is there on public display for everyone to see and share around the globe. We would hate to see a single youthful indiscretion haunt one of our children for their entire life.

This last point—that the event is a sort of “teachable moment” for students about social media—is particularly upsetting because the photos of students at the “man pageant” were originally posted on the official Hazard High School Athletics Facebook page, presumably by an adult at the school who had access to social media channels. Students didn’t do that, and putting the weight of what happened here on their shoulders is a worrisome move from a public school leader.

Given all the obfuscation, I had a few lingering questions about the history of the “man pageant” and attitudes toward it in years past. Fortunately, a former student—who attended from August 2019 to February 2020 after transferring from Perry Central High School—provided some clarification on the topic. They have asked to remain anonymous (for very obvious reasons) but their nuanced perspective gave me a little glimmer of hope that even if the adults are balking at accountability, young people are willing to step up and demand that they do so.