AL HAMNIK: 'The Region' gets burned again by social media

Not all "monsters" hide in the deep, dark recesses of our mind.

There is a new danger — more harmful than it is scary. It's the Internet, and it's too big for us to control.

I wrote about it last Wednesday and received phone calls and emails from "victims" of Twitter and Facebook malice whose athletic teams and children have been targeted by faceless cowards.

Topping that list of victims is Bowman Academy boys basketball coach Marvin Rea, whose program was put on probation last week by the Indiana High School Athletic Association for its participation in a bench-clearing brawl in Detroit.

A majority of comments from those who read the various reports published online by The Times were racist, using terms such as "ghetto," "thugs" and "hoodlums" in reference to the Gary charter school.

Rea and his players, no strangers to controversy in recent years, did nothing to smooth over "The Region's" negative image. This latest incident and readers' responses gave other schools in the state reason to fear Gary even more.

Proving them wrong just became harder, if not impossible.

"Things like this are unfortunate," IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox said. "All these people who get on these things — put on their little five-letter or five-number handle and then bash people — are nothing but a bunch of cowards.

"Come to my face and tell me what you think. Don't hide beside some handle and tell us how bad life is."

Instead, they prefer to hide in the bushes while snickering like some schoolboy who just found a chest hair.

It's OK to criticize when warranted. But social media users often choose to pile on, to generalize and stereotype.

"It incites furor," Cox said. "It just creates that kind of behavior: 'Oh, well, it's The Region. They're just a bunch of thugs.'

"There's absolutely no basis for that comment."

Our newspaper's policy on letters to the editor is that they be signed and include an address and phone number. The social network has few boundaries, making it open season on anyone.

Bowman Academy deserved to be criticized for its indiscretions but not painted with the broad brush of public ignorance.

"The Internet has empowered the village idiot," Cox said. "And this is a great example of it. They just want to act like they are somebody.

"So they make comments that are inflammatory toward a school, inflammatory toward a community, inflammatory toward a region, and then your area spends all kinds of effort trying to dispel that."

No other part of Indiana has an area called "The Region," and it's hurt us more often than not.

"That is an identifier, and so that identifier takes on a persona," Cox said. "And when you have incidents like (Bowman's) and you let idiots get on the Internet and start talking about it, it damages the persona of 'The Region.'"

Idiots. Monsters. Cowards. That's way too flattering.

This column solely represents the writer's opinion. Reach him at al.hamnik@nwi.com