According to Superintendent Suzann Lukas, everyone is to blame – the media, rowdy students, a rude audience, the School Board, a sheriff’s deputy and the mother of a student who was denied a diploma.

Everyone is to blame, that is, except her.

The School Administrative District 6 superintendent spoke to the public for the first time Monday since a controversy erupted over her response to the behavior of students at Bonny Eagle High School’s commencement ceremony June 12. Although she would obviously like to put this whole situation behind her, what she had to say at the School Board meeting is likely only to inflame parents and students further, since she neither apologized nor took responsibility for her actions that night.

What she offered was a 20-minute explanation that wagged a finger at just about everyone. Her descriptions of events drew laughter at times from the crowd, which prompted her to stop and glare back at them and at one point ask the board chairman to gavel them down so that she could continue.

Lukas began by describing a graduation ceremony in 2005, in which students danced, made gestures, jumped off the stage and, in the most egregious example of misbehavior, shot Silly String at the principal. She said the School Board held the administration responsible for not responding more assertively to the behavior that year. “I couldn’t just let it go because it was bound to escalate, as it did in 2005,” she said.

Lukas seemed to go to absurd lengths, however, to explain why she singled out one student, Justin Denney, and refused him his diploma in front of the crowd at the Cumberland County Civic Center, saying he seemed to be reaching to the crowd at one point in an area where a beach ball had been. She explained that a sheriff’s deputy had prevented her from giving diplomas to students at the end of the ceremony because the crowd was out of control and he feared for her safety.

Lukas faulted the student’s mother, Mary Denney, for not quietly accepting her son’s diploma after the ceremony. What she failed to acknowledge, however, was what this mother obviously wanted most: a public recognition of her son’s achievement and a public apology for denying it to him for doing a little showboating – bowing and blowing a kiss as he walked onto the stage.

Finally, Lukas criticized the media for reporting that she had denied students diplomas, at the same time that she was working to give the diplomas to them. What she didn’t explain was why she wasn’t returning phone calls from members of the media, who were being told she was on vacation.

All this time, all Lukas had to do was step up and take responsibility for her actions – admit she had overreacted to some unruly students, apologize and give Denney the public recognition he deserved for his accomplishment. If she can’t do that, even now after all the attention this has received, she needs to step down.

How can she expect to hold students accountable for their actions if she refuses to be held accountable for her own? How can she expect this school district to move on with a superintendent who appears incapable of two things that are essential for any leader – taking responsibility and taking control?

Brendan Moran, editor