A Call for Bose’s Permanent Removal

TW: Bose (mentions of sexual abuse, bigotry)

Wrote on 5/30/23

by Jacob Ahana-Laba

Hey, Ms. Bose. You’re a fan of me, no? You’re a fan of some. Dislike most, I’m sure, but love some. In freshman year, you paraded my name around, called me boy-genius. Thanks! I won’t say I agree — I mean, that epithet is straight-up wrong for a few reasons — but, hey, who can turn down a good compliment? 

That class — it was a fun one. It really shouldn’t have been that fun. We can all admit that class should be fun, but classes can be fun for the wrong reasons, and yours was chock-full of wrong reasons. I mean, did we read anything? I don’t remember. If we did, we didn’t. I didn’t. Others didn’t. You pipelined us into CliffsNotes or SparkNotes, maybe SuperSummary too, and taught us the art of interpreting summaries (of interpretations). Well, actually, we did read something, I just remembered — The Merchant of Venice. I don’t know if we finished it. You liked reading aloud because, as you put it, Shakespeare was your daddy, and we all half-listened to catch your all-too-quotable remarks. At least half of it was your rants. Something something Jews owning Hollywood, something something “Theo looks like a pure Aryan too!”, something something This book or Shylock’s monologue (read, per her demand, exclusively by Jewish students) is incredible super very important, here are my reasons that you ought to write about if you’d like an A-okay grade. You explained symbolism by calling a student a “sleeping beauty” you wished to wake with a kiss, flirted with him until he ditched class, made fun of him (saying “he was sooo upset yesterday” with dramatized eye-rolls) the following day. Some could disagree with your actions but only the right students, naturally, since they could survive being marked-down. 

Apparently, it was a tradition — probably more so coping and trauma-bonding, though — to rank on, whine about, insult and declaim your class, by the time I was a freshman. But you weren’t even as bad, then, as you are now. Few laugh about you anymore. The Bose-hating tradition has decayed into a school-wide wildfire of depression and, to a lesser extent, fury with you and administration. 

I heard about you during COVID. Nothing much, just rumors. Maybe it was COVID that rocked your already-cramped “style” of, uh, teaching. Apparently you’d get worked up in your trademark rants, other teachers or students (the few that felt the need to pay attention) would try to steer you back on track, but there was less accountability then, and there’s already near-none. 

But I got to experience you again the following semester. Lord, I didn’t know you taught the Creative Writing course. I didn’t think of you at all while locked up in my room for a year, so when I saw the option on the Google form, I was as oblivious as the unsuspecting students signing up for a class less class and more — for lack of a better word — ass. 

Really, though, that’s putting it lightly. Vulgar language’s kind of lost its intensity of meaning, so common in this era of youth consciousness, calling your class ass — and it really did suck ass — is of the same grain as calling it bad, or bunk or junk, or mid, so if admin happens to be reading this and wishes to penalize me for vulgarity, just… don’t. Besides, I know y’all don’t like Bose either. (Side note: I’d like to call her Bose for the remainder of this thingy. Everyone else should, too. To be frank, I don’t think any teacher should be as hung-up on honorifics as they are — after all, it abstracts teachers to predetermined authority, elevates teacher-student intimacy and understanding to some remote realm students can’t access. But I can’t be bothered to insult (even if it’s not an insult to me) other teachers. Taking something away (in this case, an honorific) isn’t really worthwhile, especially if the teacher chooses to honor themselves. Almost all teachers, considering their hard work, deserve respect. Honorifics like Ms are supposed to precede a character of respect — but since Bose has violated not only her own integrity but countless students’, I will gladly mistitle her. I’m not a God, it’s stupid to elect the value of an individual as an individual myself, but the value of a teacher is impressed in students as arbiters of their education. And one of the few things I’m certain of is that not one of Bose’s students has testified to having a positive experience). 

That room — that stifling room, windows closed-shut, masks on each face but yours — that room was a good hour-and-a-half of semester-long hell. My first memory in Creative Writing is of you stroking the backside of a male student. That was in the first week. In freshman year too, you said “You’re my ideal type!” to the boys, usually the more muscly and tall boys, quite often. In Creative Writing, that was intensified. One time, you took a sophomore front-and-center and forced him to dance with you, your fingers first knotted in his then wrapped around his backside, your head on his chest. You moved his body. He laughed, since he didn’t know what more to do. And later, he spoke of how “fucked up” that was. 

 You were still in love with me too. I’m not just saying that — you said it. Every time you ranted, whether about why your Nepalese and Chinese students ought to hate each other, Jewish stinginess, why you’re actually black, those with special needs, or the Great Hoax of Homosexuality, I wanted to say something, but guilt — betraying her favorite (me) — sealed my lips. Bose would text me almost nightly. Sometimes full-blown paragraphs, sometimes random life updates. I responded. As she began to text me more, she would say things such as, “U are the best gift ever”. She would call me her “son”. She would say “Stay in my life”, both over text and in person, almost as a demand, and often after detailing her loneliness. As I flip through a book she gave me, I see “How wonderful you are back in my life again” and — highlighted, all-caps — “STAY!” (Just tucked the book back in the cobwebbed corner it's inhabited for the last year — can’t bring myself to ever read it.)

 Bose, a whole class walked out on you for a reason. We’d been filing complaints for ages. I’m sure the generations-before filed plenty of complaints too. It wasn’t just the ever-present discomfort your language suffocated us with. Nah, you just couldn’t teach. You never taught. We didn’t write or read a word. We listened to you for hours on end and released that tension by bemoaning your presence as we walked to our next class. In Creative Writing, you told me you were planning on retiring, that your teaching years were nearing their end, which gave you a sense of immunity in the classroom. Then, you got booted. Paid leave, but walking out worked, and everyone cheered — Ms. Bose is gone! No more Ms. Bose! 

So why are you still here? Well, I know why — tenure. You don’t want to retire anymore either. Most suspect it’s spite-related. Admin, teachers — they know that you’ve abused your authority and, in confidence, have admitted to wanting you out. Apparently, you’ve isolated not just the student population, but faculty, too. Apparently as well, you’ve gotten worse. Out of the many reports I’ve been sent (other students are more trusted to act on complaints than administration), some are: “tell [name confidential] to jump out a window”; comments on “hot children”; Nazi salutes and the words “Heil Hitler”; comparing black lives to toilet paper; use of the n-word justified by claiming “motherfucker is the worst thing you can say because it invokes a son raping his mother”; saying that a long-haired boy was “genderbending”, that she loves long-haired boys, followed by her stroking the boy’s hair. 

 Since I am no longer in your class, I can’t substantiate these allegations, but I will say — based on my, and everyone’s experiences of you — I believe them wholeheartedly. 

Unfortunately, one thing this essay lacks — severely — is context. Nobody knows why Bose says the things she does. I doubt she knows herself, as she covers up criticisms with far-flung cognitive dissonance. But — at face value — I don’t think you’re a bad person, Bose. The problem is, all other students do. When the topic of your behavior has been broached (in faculty-only meetings too, I’ve been told), you brush off all criticism from your conscience. When admin asked you to simply wear your mask, you vented to me at lunchtime with long-strung rationale as to why it's unnecessary, why admin is wrong and students have just been reporting you for who-knows-what-reason. When you returned from leave (to the disappointment of everyone), you complained to me too, whined about the walkout class’ “bad, lazy students” just “looking for an excuse not to do their work”. When you’ve been confronted (an everyday experience when I was a student), you never let up, and “debates” only ended when you — the one who kicked-off each rant — felt it was time to move on, often to another tirade. 

 Whether or not you, Bose, agree with the students’ complaints… well, it doesn’t matter to me either way. To them — and to me — you created an environment antithetical to learning, an environment that actively protested the maturity of the adolescent mind. To us, your buddy-buddy warmth came off as sexual harassment. To us, your comments on race and sex were not insightful, nor an ignorance willing to change, but an ignorance actively shut off from the needs of youth, and of the world. 

Ultimately, our perception of you as your students is all that should matter. You’re not willing to change. I don’t know why this is — it may be a trait wedged-in that vibrant personality of yours. But while you taught, you hurt the lives of your students. You taught us not why Daddy Shakespeare’s an English-language revolutionary, but that we, teens already distrustful of education, can’t feel safe in class. I believe anyone can change, even you, Bose. But after years-long entreaties for this change, things have only worsened. 

 Really, I’m not just speaking for myself. Though you can never totally oust the voice of the writer from their writing, I’ve only tried to voice the thoughts of my peers, and they’re all deeply upset you’re still here. The vitriol that’s surfaced over the years about you is much, much worse than what I’m writing now. While vitriol can be cruel and unproductive, it serves an important role for the unheard. Humans — including adolescents, despite the idea that we’re pissed about everything, always — only feel the need to spout vitriol when they feel their more mild-mannered pleas have been overlooked, and neither you nor the administration has yet been receptive to this sort of dialogue. I don’t believe this essay is vitriol, but if it comes off as such, I ask that it not be disregarded as the whines of a stupid kid; rather, I ask that the vitriol surrounding Bose be treated as the song of us students, students who are, again, deeply upset. 

 In many ways, this school has done us well. In many ways, it has failed us too. But I do know the school tries, I know that legal implications bar admin from just firing her, I know the teachers’ union (though doing great work) is fighting to nail Bose’s feet to the classroom, but to say there isn’t a way — well, it’s a blatant lie. I don’t know the ins and outs of our school district, but I do know teachers have been fired for lighter. At this point, Bose’s case is one so dominant there are few students that don’t have evidence to rally for her removal. 

Though there’s an easier, less messy route too, than fighting to get her unwillingly removed… even as a long-time favorite of yours, I must ask: Ms. Bose, please retire. Please. Compared to many, I’ve been treated rather well. You gave me a free book. My grade was sky-high in favoritism, at least until my vocal disagreements. You were always kind to me, even if sometimes over the top. But I have both heard of and witnessed first-hand the air of your classroom — I have endured the discomfort, I have sat through your endless, insensitive rants, and I have felt your unwanted touch. And Bose, I know for a fact that without you teaching, the school will feel safer. 

 Though in some days I will graduate, ECHS has carved out a special place in my heart. I have learned a great deal, met and made friends and loves with students and teachers alike. Powerful bonds entrenched their roots in who I am, whether I like it or not. 

Really, what I’m trying to say is that I care for this school, whether as a student or a graduate. I want the place to thrive. But at the moment, it’s in a state of disrepair. And — however hard it is to accept — part of the pain students feel at ECHS is a pain you must take responsibility for, Bose. Which is why I ask, which is why I — we at ECHS — will always keep asking that you, Ms. Bose, retire, until you’re gone, because students deserve to know what ECHS could be without you.