Using the TikTok account crazybulldogs33 (which names itself ‘Middle School Counselor Life’) school employees of the Newberg, Oregon public school district at Mountain View Middle School, Annie Bynum and Erin Dobias, made a video of themselves performing a profane gesture with a pride flag hanging in a classroom as the background. Both Bynum and Dobias work as school counselors.
Here is a screen capture of the popularity of the channel,
As readers of the Advocate following our coverage of the Newberg Schools Saga know, concerned parents have protested the display of these political flags in the classrooms. Last year the Newberg school board passed a policy prohibiting the display of politically divisible symbols such as pride flags and wearing things like Black Lives Matter t-shirts at the request of these parents, which the teachers have refused to comply with. Teachers and the teacher union itself filed a lawsuit against the school district for passing the policy, claiming they should be allowed to use the classrooms to express their political ideologies to children using the public school resources. As previously reported by the Advocate, many of the teachers are part of a social activist group called Newberg Equity in Education (NEEd), which is a subgroup to Progressive Yamhill, a registered chapter of the Indivisible movement.
So the message of this video is clear; the people who these school counselors are flipping the bird at are not only the school board directors who passed the policy, but also the parents of the children in the district who are against the flags in the classrooms. These are public employees defying the ban on politically divisive symbols and mocking the directors, parents and voters who want these flags to be removed.
And in so doing, they demonstrated exactly why these symbols are disruptive to the learning environment, and that the teachers’ motivations are ulterior. The flags are for them to express their political beliefs in the classrooms so they can indoctrinate the children in these ideas as a form of political protest. This video is proof of that.
Furthermore, I believe there is enormous irony in teachers standing in front of a flag that claims that everyone should be respected and loved, and then telling anyone that disagrees that they should “F*ck off” — which is what the hand gesture means.
This video is an excellent piece of evidence that illustrates how the teachers displaying these flags in classrooms are not sincere about their claims that their goal is to teach children to be respectful of differences. As demonstrated by this video, they are actually using these propaganda symbols to indoctrinate children into ideas like Critical race theory that encourage hatred and anger against other groups (predominantly “whites” and heterosexuals’). They use fake “sex education” classes to indoctrinate students, as well as by displaying propaganda like posters and t-shirts designed to pressure students into identifying as “LGBTQ” to gain the approval of their teachers and other peers.
These people employed by the Newberg public schools are not authentic teachers, but instead nothing more than social activists for radical and extremist ideologies who are abusing their positions to indoctrinate children.
The Tik Tok account also has videos that are aimed at students, so it seems clear to me the intention of this account is to share the videos to students they counsel, as well as elsewhere in the district.
Proof That These Are Newberg School Counselors
Proof that Annie Bynum and Erin Dobias work in these positions for the Newberg public school district can be seen from their LinkedIn profiles, as well as the Newberg public school employee directory. Annie Bynum is also a member of the Newberg Equity in Education (NEEd) Facebook group.
This is proof of Annie Bynum’s membership in NEEd, taken from the master screenshot of everyone who was in the group with an ‘A’ in their first or last name (open the file in MS Paint and zoom in to read the list).
And here is the proof about Erin Dobias’ employment status.
I also want to just highlight that her official employee photo for the school depicts her eating a donut.
It appears that Erin Dobias views herself not as a school counselor, but instead a comedian. That is clearly what she spends her work time doing, engaging in comedy to entertain her coworkers and random people on the internet via her TikTok account.
Additional Videos on the Tik Tok Account
Based on the content of the account, it seems these counselors are attempting to carve out a niche of comedy videos about being a school employee, and mining their access to resources and information to create comedy videos. For example, in this video she uses a student’s disciplinary meeting as fodder to make jokes to entertain her audience,
In another video on the Tik Tok channel, Erin Dobias performs a sketch comedy skit where, according to the video description, “size matters”. The video features Dobias hands an over-sized pencil to Mountain View Middle School secretary and book keeper Vicki Klein, who then curses.
Proof that this is Vicki Klein, who is also a member of Newberg Equity in Education (NEEd),
(Strangely, Klein’s official employee photo also shows her eating a donut)
In the comment section of a Save our Schools Newberg Facebook post about these videos, Vicki Klein decided to speak up and talk about how the “people” making the channel had good intentions, never mentioning she is one of the people who helped produce videos on the channel. The above video was clearly staged to get views on TikTok. That is why there is a camera from the phone setup in advance.
Given that Vicki Klein has attempted to pretend to be a neutral party and not someone who has been part of the videos uploaded to the channel, I am skeptical about her claims.
I have archived all of the videos from the TikTok channel, which demonstrates they spend a great deal of their time at work making these TikTok videos.
These are not the actions of responsible and mature adults who are genuinely interested in counseling children. Instead, these are the actions of immature narcissists more interested in getting attention for themselves through childish pranks and other skits they make to entertain their peers at work while leveraging the privilege of their employment to advance their personal aspirations. They view the schools as a stage for themselves to garner attention, and clearly do not view it as a serious place for the education of the next generation of Americans.
This is how they spend their time as employees of the school district; virtue signaling, creating Tik Tok videos and fooling around, while also using their positions to indoctrinate children so they can grow up to be equally ridiculous people as adults.
It’s no wonder that parents are upset about bullying problems within the Newberg public school district, when this is how the school counselors are behaving. These women clearly lack the maturity or intelligence to behave responsibly and professionally, to set examples for how the children should behave at school. When the teachers and school counselors behave like immature jerks, you cannot expect the students to do any better, as the adults who are supposed to be setting the example and maintaining standards cannot hold the students to a higher standard than they hold themselves to.
These social activists should be fired. They have nothing of value to teach children. If anything, they are the ones in need of psychological counseling to help them overcome their own negative behavior problems.
Update: 1st Statement from Newberg Public Schools
The Newberg Public Schools Facebook page has issued the following statement concerning this matter,
Update: 2nd Statement from Newberg Public Schools Communication Coordinator Gregg Koskela
Newberg Public Schools Communication Coordinator Gregg Koskela (who I should note, is also a member of Newberg Equity in Education) has sent the following email notice to parents concerning this matter,
They should be fired! Not only that, they need a proofreader – “allowed”, not “aloud”. Seriously, is this the caliber of employees you want in your schools influencing your children and grandchildren??? Not in MY lifetime I don’t!
I wasn’t planning on responding to this. However, I noticed several other references to the supposed error in the comments below, so I feel compelled to address it
The quotation marks around the comment in the video means that they were quoting someone else. So, whoever they were quoting was the one who spelled “allowed” incorrectly.
In fact, I think this particular comment was likely chosen intentionally, in order to highlight the sense that one side is educated while the other is not. It’s the exact same intention as the people who are commenting on the spelling error here. “My side is intelligent and educated, while the other is not.” I suppose if the counselors really wanted to be clear about it all, they could have inserted [sic] to indicate that they were aware of the error. However, I think it was quite evident even without such clarification.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this video was okay, I just think it’s important that people are fair and accurate in their critiques of others. I also don’t think it’s super helpful to attack the intelligence and education level of people we disagree with. I’m sure I don’t agree with much of anything that most of you believe, but I still respect and care about you as fellow humans. I want your arguments to be heard and critiqued accurately, while at the same time I want your humanity to be respected.
You got it wrong. One side wants to point out the other side isn’t as educated as how they portray themselves and frame their arguments.
No, I did not get it wrong. A bunch of people here are mocking the counselors for a supposed grammar mistake, when in reality it was a quote of someone who used the wrong homophone. Hence the quotation marks. The counselors probably used this quote to make that person appear uneducated. It’s a way to discredit that person and their argument, and it’s not fair. Ironically, there are people here, posting about how unintelligent the counselors are for using the wrong word. These folks are doing this because they don’t understand what the quotation marks mean. Anyway, take care and I wish you well.
Great article!
Allowed not “aloud” SMH. God help the kids.
Lots of tolerance, inclusion and love thy neighbor there…….
I understand that this is an “opinion” article, so I feel like I have the right to put my own here as well. I graduated from Newberg High School in 2020, and before that I attended the same school that these 2 amazing counselors work at. I am a queer individual, and so seeing these women get hate for defending me as well as my community is absolutely sickening. I came out publicly while I was in Middle School, so I cannot possibly imagine what queer students are going through now. I am not a parent, but I would refuse to send my children to ANY school that openly discriminates against the LGBT+ community as well as the Black community. These flags are not political, it is people like YOU who make it so. We are human beings, and we deserve to be heard and seen just as equally as other students. If you truly cared about your children, you wouldn’t engrain this hatred into them, and you would love and accept them for who they are, no matter if they’re gay, straight, or anything in between. While I understand that they’re way of “protesting” the ban of these flags can be seen as inappropriate to some, I CAN understand their anger at a school district that doesn’t care about all of its students equally. From a previous Newberg student – I wish the best of luck to any and all students who are now made to feel like they don’t belong in this hateful environment. You DO belong. You’re amazing. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.
Contrary to what you think, your comment does not defend their actions but instead lends more credibility to the criticism against them. You claim they were “defending you” but they are not defending anyone in this video. They are flipping the bird to people who correctly state that political flags do not belong in schools, because schools are not a place to indoctrinate children into ideologies, which unfortunately it sounds like they clearly did to you.
Heterosexual is the default sexual orientation for humans. This is because humans are mammals, and mammals sexually reproduce using one male and one female of the same species. If there was any other sexual orientation in our genetics, the species would have gone extinct. 250,000 years of human evolution. 100% of your ancestors were heterosexual, you have no genes that cause homosexual behavior. No humans do. It is a culturally conditioned behavior. This is a fact. It is super easy to prove actually, because if it was genetic then identical twins would always be gay or homosexual, and there are numerous cases of identical twins with one gay and one not. If it was genetic this would be impossible to see with such regularity.
Individual humans can adopt all kinds of behaviors and believe they are natural, but that does not automatically make it so.
You may not like the science because it does not support your worldview but the science is what it is, and these counselors do not have the right to indoctrinate people in their pseudo-scientific beliefs just because they feel entitled to do so.
You have been the subject of bad teaching, and this bad teaching has encouraged you to adopt behaviors that may be difficult, even impossible, to unlearn.
It is incorrect to claim homosexual behavior is a behavior that cannot be criticized nor challenged. As a population group, homosexual people (both men and women) are more likely to acquire STDs (such as HIV), more likely to abuse recreational drugs, more likely to suffer mental illness (such as being suicidal), more likely to not have children and more likely to end up alone in old age. If they do have children, those children are more likely to do poorly academically, more likely to suffer from mental illness, more likely to not have children of their own. This tendency is not because of genetic reasons, because homosexuality is not genetic. It is because of the associated cultural behaviors widely practiced among homosexual people as part of ‘gay culture’. Consequently, there are indeed negative things about the culture that can be criticized and your school counselors have done you an enormous disservice by validating your feelings and encouraging you to seemingly adopt a hedonist moral philosophical outlook on life — that things are “good” because they make you feel happy and comfortable, and things are “bad” if they make you unhappy and uncomfortable. This is not a good way to make decisions, because many things can provide short term happiness and long term negative consequences, and many things that cause short term unhappiness can cause long term happiness.
You can choose to be what sexual orientation you desire, but attempting to shut down criticism of your choices by claiming others are simply hateful because they do not support your views is not the hallmark of an intellectual. It is instead just a hedonistic worldview that inevitably will lead to poor decision making. Tragically, hedonism has become the most common moral framework for homosexual people because of the activism that promotes it, and it sounds like you have become led astray by that activism. This is your opportunity to re-assess and consider re-calibrating your moral compass. Being homosexual is not inherently immoral, but your accompanying beliefs about why your behavior should be beyond reproach are not constructive to good decision making.
You might want to take a refresher course on the role of biology in determining same-sex orientation. Actually, you probably don’t, but if you consistently feel the need to pontificate on the naturalness of something, why not be right, right? As a positive first step, try not to confuse orientation with behavior. The former is not a choice, the latter is. Our ancestors, regardless of orientation, made a choice to conform to the roles assigned to them by their culture. That that compulsion no longer pulls on LGBTQ people with quite the same weight is a measure of progress, not licentiousness. Regarding the supposed negative impacts of homosexuality that you took great pains to share with us, how many are a product of homophobia, of the non-acceptance that LGBTQ people face, rather than one of their orientation itself. Science is not on your side and, given either your ignorance or intellectual dishonesty, you probably shouldn’t be lecturing anyone else on behavior or decision making.
“Our ancestors, regardless of orientation, made a choice to conform to the roles assigned to them by their culture” — Where is your evidence? This is simply you speculating. You are assuming that gay male ancestors still chose to procreate with women, when you haven no evidence for such a statement. You do realize our earliest ancestors lacked the kind of reasoning we employ today, correct? That if a human is not raised to think like a modern human, they will be unable to do so once they mature. Critical thinking is cultural and must be taught during youth, it is a piece of technology humans invented and our earliest ancestors did not practice it. They were driven primarily by base impulses just like every other creature in the animal kingdom is.
Because of cases of child abuse or child abandonment, we know for a fact that critical thinking skills must be taught during youth. It is related to the teaching of complex language used by humans, and if children do not learn language they struggle to learn critical thinking, and may never be able to do so. This is one of the reasons why it is so critical for children who are deaf and blind to learn languages during childhood, not just to communicate but because they will never be able to develop critical thinking if they do not.
Everything I said is based upon an evidence based methodology. Our earliest ancestors were not capable of the kind of decision making you claim they employed in order to pass down “gay genes”. You didn’t mention “gay genes” but in order for orientation to not be a choice it must be genetic. It obviously isn’t genetic if someone can choose to ignore it and change their behavior. You cannot over-ride instincts.
Again, twin studies has demonstrated homosexuality is not genetic. There is no identifiable gene for the behavior. It is consequently cultural.
What you have claimed, that “orientation” and “behavior” are unrelated and different, and that supposedly ancient gay ancestors chose to procreate with women, is a narrative based on conjecture that lacks evidence for the claim. It is a nice story created by modern day activists to justify modern ideologies because they cannot use science based methodology to justify their belief. It does not address that it is an indisputable fact there is NO gene that is linked to homosexual behavior. None. Zero!
You may think you will now employ the rationalization — “well, they weren’t gay ancestors, they were just bisexual” which is a common trap people such as yourself think, but the problem with that is it would mean a gene for bisexuality would be passed down, not homosexuality. And there still is no gene for bisexual behavior, either.
Your belief is not legitimate biology. Biology does not employ the use of creative narratives, because it is a hard science. Only sociology uses this kind of conjecture.
Consequently it sounds like you are the one who needs the refreshers. If you want to employ creative storytelling in your beliefs, you should read up on the interdisciplinary field of evolutionary psychology. It has conjecture but it is based on evolutionary biology (when it is legitimately practiced, anyway). Not third wave feminism, which is what you have described.
If you had studied evolutionary psychology you would understand that the theory our cultural roles are dictated by our biology is a better explanation for why gender roles exist. It is not that “culture” restricts biological behavior, but that culture is an expression of our biological behavior. Gender roles especially so, are reflections of biology, and the physical differences between men and women. Your ideas won’t make women faster runners or stronger weight lifters and your ideas won’t change how pregnancy works. Gender roles are dictated by biology, not your feelings.
“Regarding the supposed negative impacts of homosexuality that you took great pains to share with us, how many are a product of homophobia, of the non-acceptance that LGBTQ people face, rather than one of their orientation itself. ” — You are suggesting that homosexual people are more likely to get STDS because of bullying? Did you even think what you said through?
Why are they more likely to end up alone in old age, even if in youth they had community? Is that because of bullying as well?
Here’s the truth — simply being bullied does not make one suicidal. It takes an enormous amount of psychological abuse for someone to develop clinical depression, which is what is required for one to become suicidal. Clinical depression can be a temporary state brought by distress, but it takes a significant life altering event to trigger it, and bullying as the sole factor for developing this depression cannot account for situations where homosexual people who were accepted by their families and peers still develop clinical depression and commit suicide. You are ignoring that suicidal thoughts and tendencies are also brought about by enormous regret for one’s own poor decision-making, such as the kind hedonist moral frameworks encourage a person to engage in.
You are wishing to blame “bullying” for the consequences of the hedonistic decision making that mainstream gay culture encourages, and that is erroneous thinking.
You have said this all perfectly.
Schooling is about core knowledge. Most teens and pre-teens are awkward and uncomfortable, that doesn’t mean they should change who they inherently are to momentarily fit in.
Teachers have a job, teach students based on a curriculum built by academics to help the general mass of kids learn.
Counselors have a job, combine their counseling program with the schools academic mission. Based on the policies in place with the school it’s obvious they cannot do their jobs. They cannot follow simple requests from supervisors and parents. Both of which they work for. Both of which pay their salaries and that office they are improperly using.
This example here is why my children will not attend public school. Children are required to attend school and that is why public schools are meant to be unbiased.
My children are my everything. I raise them, I love them, I am the one that cares about how they grow up, and I will always be there.
It is not up to a TEMPORARILY involved self riotous counselor or teacher how someone else’s children develop beyond the job they are hired to do.
How they do not see where they are wrong is baffling and not the type of people that should be guiding humans as they go through one of the most vulnerable stages in life.
Schooling should have nothing to do with the staffs personal beliefs no matter what they are.
Well said my friend. I do not hate a person due to their sexual persuasion or the color of their skin. ALL flags other than the US Flag and the particular State flag should be removed and not allowed. We need to be teaching our kids how to read and write, how to add and subtract, accurate history and real life skills instead of teaching them prejudice ideologies
You are seen and heard. You can be whoever you want to be. These counselors were not defending you, they were acting like children throwing a tantrum. Signs and flags do not welcome you, people welcome you. You feel welcome because another human being cares about you, not a flag.
These counselors represent their employer, the school, when they are on site. They can make videos with whatever content they want on their own time but this is not behavior that any employer would tolerate from their employees. These employees collect a paycheck because we the people pay taxes. Without us taxpayers they would not have jobs at our schools. We do not want to pay for this behavior.
This District is out of control. So much for hiring gay hippie educators who are not real teachers! This behavior is not in the best interests of the students nor the community. This is over the top! Fire them and make all teacher at will emplyees of the district bust their union and hire only contract employees who are not in the union. Our kids deserve better so do we!
You think you’d get something better by eliminating a huge percentage of your experienced educators?
The most experienced educators who behave like this during work and leverage their positions to indoctrinate children into extreme pseudo-scientific ideologies. Yes, they should be fired. Drain the swamp and replace them with people who are going to do their jobs responsibly.
Definitely, I’m sick of teachers giving their opinions on what they think is the right way,. If a teacher teaches math, English, or history, that’s what you teach, not to indoctrinate children, into something else. If you as a teacher can’t do that, you should be fired immediately.
Who associated with education here spells allowed as aloud?
Schools must focus on teaching reading writing and arithmetic and stay out of trying to indoctrinate our children.
They have been put on a leave of absence. ?
As Executive Director for the Center for Human Equality (CHE) in Southern Oregon we have all heard of the problems in Newberg. In my opinion, the actions taken by these individuals are not promoting equality for all, but supremacy for their ideas and groups they support. Equality of respect for human beings comes from recognizing that all of us have the right to think differently, not to denigrate or insult others who may have another opinion or value.
This is intolerance for the parents who may not share the same values that they do. Ideas and values are what creates our character, not skin color, gender, or other factors. Tolerance of ideas is the most important kind of tolerance human beings can have. These individuals do not appear to have any tolerance for parents who think differently. That is extremely unfortunate for people who are supposed to be “counselors.”
I am surprised anyone would think that this kind of behavior is appropriate for work.
The board needs to start disciplinary action, and if this isn’t stopped immediately, they need to be terminated with cause, and without pay
i agree with you Paul Hill. This behavior was very unprofessional. They should be fired and license revoked forever.
My kids, MY morals and rules!
Not some illiterate civil servant
It seems counselors should be trying to bridge gaps. But the left has been radicalized to the point they believe this behavior is ok. Sad. They should lose their jobs.
Any updates on the outcome of the investigation?
I do have new information, it will be published into a new article once I confirm a few details so that everything is in one new article.