Voices of West Virginia Academy

I want to take this moment to tell you about my experience at this school and how it has affected me. I came back to this school hoping for a fresh start after being promised a new and “better” approach to education, and after struggling in a large public school, my parents thought this would be a less toxic learning environment.  It was the exact opposite. I met with Heidi Treu to discuss my transcript and the help I would need to graduate, instead me and my parents were taken into a private room by Heidi Treu where she proceeded to lecture me about non-academic issues.  She said I would have to dress more conservative than the other students “so that I don’t distract the poor 8th grade boys”, in her words. Me and my parents thought the whole thing was odd and sounded like a lecture from an old movie, but we brushed it off. We thought a grown woman with a daughter my age should have some understanding of the impact her degrading comments would have, and would keep her outdated ideas to herself.  Spoiler, she did not. I had a hard time finding skirts that fit my waist but cover the rest given my body type, but I did my best. I bought sweatpants that satisfied the dress code so I could stay warm in the freezing building in winter, then Heidi changed the code in the middle of the year for absolutely no reason.

For years I have severely struggled to focus in class and to get through the day in general. My parents thought smaller classes with fewer students would help me succeed, but at West Virginia academy the students were not the problem. In fact, no student has ever treated me as terribly as the Treus. It started out as Heidi Treu taking me out of class most days to infract me for violating dress code, but over time she got more aggressive. Heidi started walking into my classes to scold me individually for violating dress code while I was surrounded by other students who were in blatant violation including her own son. Heidi abused her power to recruit Professor Summers to do the same. I asked many students and teachers if Heidi and Summers treated me differently than other students. The teachers I asked apologized for Heidi’s actions but said they can’t stand up to her because she is their superior. 

I tried to respect her authority but it seemed like making me feel small somehow made her feel better about herself. It got to the point where when I had to use the restroom before getting on the bus for a field trip, I walked down the hall with a student with a shorter skirt than mine (but that student has a different body type), Heidi still felt the need to get in my face and start screaming like a child because my fingertip length skirt was completely inappropriate and I was giving the school a “bad image” during the Yass visit. She was clearly stressed out over the visit and took it out on me, but a school leader should know better and be better. 

Heidi Treu voiced her opinion on me very outwardly before giving me a chance to earn her respect but she wasn’t the only Treu who assumed I deserved their disrespect. After the October board meeting a teacher told me that John Treu, a grown 43-year-old man, referred to me, a 16-year-old girl, as a “slut”. After that meeting John, Heidi, Summers, and Holly Honeycutt (a person I thought cared about her students and wanted to help) started telling other students and teachers untrue things about me and my family to make themselves feel better for being the people they really are. 

It was clear after teachers started treating me differently, as I grew up people my age would look at me and have an opinion before we even had a conversation.  They didn’t learn about who I was as a person before referring to me as a slut, whore, etc. I started severely struggling with my body image. I was staying in my house hoping that these people would mature with age but I guess not.

I am just a 16-year-old girl and I’m realizing these things happen to so many women and it will never just change. Whether I am walking into school, or a job interview in 20 years it won’t matter what I say, how smart, or well spoken I am, their first opinion of me is based on my looks. In school, if my skirt was too “short” or my pants were too tight the administration said I looked like a “slut” and the boys around me won’t concentrate. But when I wore sweatpants and a hoodie they told me I looked unprofessional and nobody will take me seriously. 

Either way, everywhere I go, I will be made to feel scared or uncomfortable by people my age and that’s the reality me and every other girl will have to cope with because it has become “normal”, but this is different. 

John and Heidi Treu are both middle-aged and I am 16 and they still are looking at me as if I’m an object, and not a person. I am not so stupid that you or anyone else can convince me that that is normal. You can call me names behind closed doors all you want and make me look like a bad person for standing up for myself, but John Treu how would you feel if someone looked at your daughter the way you look at me? John has tried to take me and my family’s voices time and time again. He denied mine and my father’s request to speak at this board meeting because he hides the truth from everyone else so he can keep living in his own made up delusion that he is a good person. John and Heidi Treu, I hope you realize before it’s too late that you are too immature to have kids let alone run a school.

Ella McWilliams