#Hashtag Controversy Continues, Crisis Center Displeased

When the  (1-8, 0-4) visit the neighboring  (3-6, 0-4) , there won't be a league championship at stake, just pride. 

But a recent has touched off controversy and amped up hard feelings, at least online.  

The administration of the Cuyahoga Falls City School District finds itself in a tight spot. Superintendent Todd Nichols wouldn't say what, if any, disciplinary action would be taken against students found to have participated in the Twitter hashtagging. 

"Mainly because it's in a touchy area," Nichols said. "It's on social media, it's outside of school, it's those kinds of things. So we are engaged with our students in promoting the healthy rivalry between Stow and ourselves.

"I think we're handling it as appropriately as it can be handled," Nichols said. "And that is in partnership with Stow. Between Russ Jones, (Stow's) superintendent, and myself, and our building principals and our athletic directors, we are busy promoting the healthy rivalry that's existed for many years between Cuyahoga Falls and Stow," Nichols said.

"(We're) also involved in A., letting our kids know that (that kind) of interaction is inappropriate and B., teaching them how to use social media in appropriate ways." 

Critics of the (presumed) Cuyahoga Falls students who have started and continue to post Tweets with the "#rapestow" tag say the Tweets are inappropriate and reflect a lack of understanding of the serious nature of sexual assault.

Late Tuesday evening and part of Wednesday, some Twitter users started to use the hastags "#rapefalls" or "#trashfalls" despite Principal Susan . 

Those hashtags aren't being used as frequently as "#rapestow" was yesterday.

Terri Heckman, director of the Rape Crisis Center of Medina and Summit Counties, told WAKR radio, “It’s not that the kids are taking it literally. They’re not using it in that way. But as all these situations go, they grab on to words and use them without thinking about the true meaning. Someone’s gotta grab those kids, be it a teacher — one of the best people to do it is the coach.”

The authors of many of the tweets say "older" people don't get the joke, that it doesn't really mean rape, that it's all harmless fun.

In the meantime, the pace of the hashtags slowed Wednesday during school hours.