Psy 324: Advanced Social Psychology
Miami University
Living in a Social World
Psy 324: Advanced Social Psychology
Miami University
Values in Conflict: Holy Smoke! Parochial Students Punished for Marijuana -- March 24, 1999. Analysis by Claudia Peschiera, Jessica Shuleva, Don Shea & Zachary Shuler
Take a moment to reflect upon your
grade school days. Travel back in time to the sixth grade, a period that was probably very
influential in your psychosocial development. Now imagine that a fellow student is rumored
to be in possession of drugs, and is trying to keep the illegal substance hidden from the
teacher’s knowledge. As a sixth-grader, how would you react? Would you
"nark" on the student? Students 
at a parochial school in
Greenhills, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, were confronted with this very
scenario last week.
The entire sixth grade at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School was suspended last Friday for failing to tell teachers that a fellow student was in possession of marijuana. This (lack of) response on behalf of the students was particularly shocking to school officials because the sixth-graders were recent graduates of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program. The teachers reasoned that students should have known exactly what to do if this type of situation were to arise, yet the sixth-graders turned down all three opportunities they had been given to alert school officials of the marijuana. School officials only found out about the marijuana indirectly, after two students went home and told their mothers about the rumors. All 30 sixth-graders were then suspended and ordered to attend an anti-drug program with their parents, or face a four-day suspension.
According to news reports, virtually every sixth-grade student had knowledge that their fellow classmate was in possession of marijuana, yet not one student chose to tell the teacher. Are these kids just plain "bad?" When attempting to decide, one must take into consideration the correspondence bias. Do we, as outsiders, fully understand the situational forces present at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School? Certain theories within interpersonal perception may help also explain why none of the thirty students told the teacher about the drugs. For instance, was a student’s decision not to tell based on the reactions of his or her fellow students? This article also points to the difficulties associated with attitude change. What role, if any, should the D.A.R.E. program have played in this situation? These are just a few questions that can be answered using social psychological principles, which are represented throughout this news story. How could the knowledge of other social psychological principles have benefited the students? The school officials?
*Click Here for The Team's Final Analysis*
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Social Psychology / Miami University (Ohio USA). Last revised: . This document has been accessed times since 1 Sept 1998. Comments & Questions to R. Sherman
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