Hanover trustees’ posts on social media has expert calling them incredibly immature, irresponsible

As election day for Hanover school trustees nears, some trustees have made posts on social media that in some cases bait other users and mocks the education minister, leading one expert to call their actions immature and irresponsible.

Current trustee Brad Unger has posted to social media his personal beliefs and values and has asked for trustee candidates to share their beliefs and values, trustee Jeff Friesen has argued with and insulted other candidates and voters online, and trustee Shayne Barkman has posted a cartoon mocking the minister of education.

“It’s incredibly immature. It’s very irresponsible. It severely degrades our civic culture. It’s an incredible disservice to the people they’re supposed to be representing. They set a very bad example for young people,” said Jason Hannan, a professor at the University of Manitoba who has been studying social media for the past 10 years.

Hannan wrote the book, Trolling Ourselves to Death, about people, especially public figures, resorting to “a very juvenile form of communication online.”

“Unfortunately, this has become a very cheap way of building an audience and building a following,” he said. “Trolling people, demonizing them online, creating some false moral panic. It’s a cheap way for this kind of newer era of chronically online politicians and school board representatives and so forth, to build a following. Because, unfortunately, rage and rage bait seems to be attractive to a lot of people.”

Unger, who is not running for trustee but is running for a seat on the City of Steinbach council, sent a list of seven questions to trustee candidates in August asking them their views and values about issues such as gender and sex, race, which flags should be raised in a classroom, among other topics.

Friesen answered those questions and posted them publicly on Facebook, which received positive and negative comments from other users.

While Friesen responded to both positive and negative comments, it was the negative comments that led him to lash out at other users, some of whom are fellow candidates and voters. He questioned one candidate’s belief in God, called one voter irrational, and baited users.

Friesen did not respond to a request for an interview, but in a Sept. 1 school board meeting, he opened the meeting with a speech where he stated that while he can’t control what other people say he can control his reaction to them, adding he has tried to live his life with integrity, honesty, fairness, and respect for other people and that he’s willing to admit when he is wrong.

Barkman also reposted a cartoon from Concerned Citizens Canada, a far-right Christian group, on his election Facebook page depicting Minister of Education Tracy Schmidt being used as a puppet by Minister of Health Uzoma Asagwara (who is non-binary) with a billboard in the background stating “Manitoba Health (Trans Agenda).

The image also depicts the Manitoba Teachers’ Society controlling a sword with an inscription to rescind the motion to create an anti-mature minor policy that the trustees passed before Schmidt ordered them to rescind it. All this with a Hanover trustee holding a shield that reads, “Hanover School Division protecting what matters most: Faith, family, community” in front of a group of scared children protecting them from Schmidt, Asagwara, and MTS.

Barkman’s post has since been taken down from his Facebook page after MTS president Lillian Klausen told a media outlet the organization sent a cease and desist letter to him.

Klausen was away on holiday and not available for comment. Barkman did not return a request for an interview. Schmidt issued a satement declaring her job as minister is to make sure that all students in Manitoba have access to the highest quality education.

Hannan said these candidates believe in what they are espousing and are fomenting a moral panic. As to whether this will hurt their chances at the polls is hard to say, said Hannan, pointing to the United States and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre as examples of this type of rhetoric being successful for far-right audiences, but alienating centrist, liberal, or progressive voters.

“I’m not even talking about the political content, just the style, that abrasive, obnoxious, immature, juvenile style…Unfortunately, the political right, the far-right, both in Canada and in the United States and elsewhere, have very aggressively embraced this obnoxious, almost hateful style of communication,” said Hannan, noting Canadians are getting tired of this type of “trolling.”

He said these people use this type of communication because they don’t have an argument for the policies they’re making so they resort to other ways of making them appealing to voters, usually by demonizing the enemy, who sometimes isn’t even real.

Former Hanover superintendent Ken Klassen, who has spent his career in Hanover schools and on the board as administrator, said for 50 years the division has been one of the most stable small-C, middle-of-the-road, conservative boards in the province. It is only within the last election cycle that this has changed due to a group within the current board who have an agenda to take over.

“The people that are running for re-election have also managed to align with some new candidates. And all they need is five votes in order to be able to control the board,” said Klassen, noting candidates Friesen, Barkman, and Cheryl Froese have had their children in private schools.

“This, for me, is one of the biggest issues in this campaign. We have a whole host of young parents, mothers and fathers, with kids in school, in Hanover schools, who have a real vision for public education. They’re running to govern their own system and meanwhile, we still have three people who are seeking re-election that send some of their children, or all of them maybe, to private schools. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Froese has stated on the Hanover Teachers’ Association survey that she sent one child to a private Christian school and Barkman and Friesen claim all their children are in the Hanover School Division, according to the HTA survey and social media, respectively.

Klassen has written letters to the editor in The Carillon voicing his concerns with this board’s policies and motions, notably the mature minor motion.

He said he is aware of the social media posts made by Unger, Friesen, and Barkman and sees them using it as a distraction from the mature minor policy, which made local, provincial, and national news. He also noted that the three trustees are not the only candidates that are using social media to tell their own story.

“(This has) been done since the internet,” said Klassen. “But this one is particularly – it’s much more active because there’s an actual issue. It’s kind of one side wants to continue with the way things have been going…And the other side is trying to keep a focus on what went wrong with the board and what needs to change,” he said.

Hannan said this type of commentary has been around for 200 years and social media is a catalyst. “It’s a bit of a violent metaphor, but it’s kind of like a gun: The gun was always there, social media just pulled the trigger.”

Hannan said it’s important to have digital literacy, which begins in schools. He said this is not the way to engage in politics.

“It’s not good for our democracy. This is not the way that we should be doing democratic engagement at all. We need the opposite. We need a return to civil discussion and building trust between human beings, between citizens.”