Late-night, student body email thread exposes racism, homophobia

Posted March 2021

By Graciela Del Rosario

Staff Reporter

Among the “Snow-pocalypse” and power outages that struck President’s Day week, communication between the David Douglas District and families were limited to a sparse number of emails concerning CDL and school-provided resources. However, a singular email thread quickly turned ugly and eventually exploded into a late-night, school-wide groupchat that included all 3000+ high school students.

On Feb. 16 at around 6:40 p.m., activities director Amber Cowgill sent an email to the student body announcing no online classes for Feb. 17, due to power outages. The email was inadvertently sent as a CC (Carbon Copy) instead of a BCC (Blind Carbon Copy), which allowed replies not only directed at Cowgill, but the entire school. Initially, a handful of students replied to the email expressing gratitude for the notification, with nothing more than a couple of "Thank You" messages within two hours. At about 9 p.m., however, students quickly discovered how exploitable the email thread was becoming. Students were quick to pile on the evergrowing thread and started to treat it as a giant groupchat. A variety of messages were being sent at lightning speed, ranging from harmless jokes to different media-like videos and pictures.

As the threads continued, the messages started to escalate later that night. Innocent quips turned into harsh remarks about other students, including racist and homophobic comments, and even jabs at the school itself. There were the occasional messages pleading for the email chains to stop, but they were ignored.

“I appreciated all of the students that took time to either respond to their peers to stop using the email inappropriately and to those that sent me kind messages,” said Cowgill.

For nearly three hours straight the notifications seemed never-ending, and cell-phones and computers were being slowed down significantly by the sheer number of messages. Some students were even continuing to send emails into the next day. There are roughly 28 individual threads that remain, each with about 10-20 replies, and every single message was notified and recorded by the entire school.

“I was frustrated and disappointed in our students,” said Cowgill. “I communicate information to the students regularly throughout the year. I know multiple students appreciate the information I send. I was disappointed that students took advantage of an error on my part.”

Whilst the emails were raging on, many students were still experiencing big power-outages that were created by the snowstorm the same week. Portland General Electric (PGE) alone reported 148,000 Oregonians without power on Feb. 17. Many families and students rely on emails from the district regarding school closings and updates, but due to the nonstop notifications, electronics would gradually lose battery life and vital emails could have been buried.

At 11 p.m., the school announced the IT department and the admin team were contacted and working to slow the emails and to investigate, into the following morning. As a result, some student Gmail accounts were disabled, and some threads were deleted.

The following week, Cowgill explained what happened to all teachers and staff. Then, principal John Bier and assistant principal Linda Vancil informed all parents and students what took place on Feb. 16, and that disciplinary action will be taken in accordance with the chains.

“We know that David Douglas High School is full of respectful, tolerant, supportive, collaborative students seeking to learn, grow, and thrive,” said Bier. “We want to be clear that this is completely unacceptable. We will not condone racial, ethnic, sexual, gender based/transgender or any other kind of harassment.”