Earlier this month, the principal at Brooke High School in Wellsburg, West Virginia, was arrested for allegedly hiding cameras in female changing areas. The story has made national news, covered by such outlets as Fox, People, and the New York Post. It has even made international news, the UK’s Daily Mail writing about it under the headline “Southern father-of-three school principal is charged after four secret cameras are found inside girls’ locker room.” The inclusion of the word “southern” is particularly interesting in that headline, almost as if the geographic location factors into the principal’s misdeeds (never mind that Wellsburg is north of the Mason-Dixon Line). 

It reminds me of the New York Times coverage of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud from over a hundred years ago. In reporting on the feud, the Times ran such headlines as “West Virginia’s Outlaws” and “A War of Extermination.” In one article, the Times described the feud as “a reign of terror.” In another, they wrote how the feud “fanned hatred to white heat.” In a time before TV, radio, and the internet, such descriptions were about the only picture many outsiders had of Appalachia. As historian Altina L. Waller has posited, these uncivilized, violent caricatures made it easier to justify King Coal and other extractive industries coming in to take over the land.

Is something similar happening all over again? 

On the same day the New York Post ran a story about the Brooke High School principal, Mingo county parents filed a lawsuit against state officials alleging years of underfunding that has undermined students’ right to a public education. This latter story didn’t make national news, despite the fact this underfunding has fueled the state’s current school consolidation crisis.

When a school closes in a town, property values decrease. Families move elsewhere. Depopulation ramps up even more. The students left behind are often stuck with longer commutes, overcrowded classrooms, and less extracurricular opportunities. All of that, in turn, leads to less educational achievement and more poverty, more addiction, even more depopulation. A vicious cycle.

To make matters worse, with the Hope Scholarship, public money is being funneled into private pockets — more specifically, private out-of-state pockets. With a large number of homeschooled children in the state enrolled in out-of-state virtual programs, not only are Hope funds not going to our schools, but they’re not going to any place that benefits our state.

So who does benefit? In the 1800s, it was the railroad, coal and timber industries. Robber barons living in the northeast. Now, it seems like it’s the robber barons living out west in Silicon Valley who are benefitting. Interestingly, the politicians pushing the Hope Scholarship and leading the charge to kill public education are the same ones pushing data centers. As one data company engineer put it, “We can do pretty much whatever we want to do up there [in West Virginia].” Of course, many state GOP leaders, including the governor, denounced the engineer’s comments, though they curiously haven’t pushed back on what President Donald Trump said about the topic. “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers,” Trump posted on social media, “is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”

New century, same story.

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