What Parents Need To Know After School Board Member Keith Ervin Hugged A Student And Called Her ‘Hot’
I was leaning against the front office counter of my daughter’s high school last month, killing time while she finished a make-up biology test, when the conversation two women next to me sucked the air out of the small room. The linoleum smelled like lemon cleaner and old bubble gum, a freshman dropped his crumpled permission slip for the field trip right by my feet, and I heard one of the women say Keith Ervin’s name. Like everyone in our 10,000-person town, I knew Ervin: he’d been on the school board for 12 years, coached my husband’s Little League team when they were kids, always had a peppermint in his pocket for anyone who stopped to talk. Then the other woman said, “Called a 15-year-old hot after he hugged her too long. Can you believe that?”
I got in my car to leave, and my daughter Lila slung her backpack into the backseat and immediately brought it up. The student involved is Mia, a sophomore Lila did student council orientation with back in the fall. After the last district student council meeting, everyone left except Mia, who stayed behind to ask Ervin about her proposal to add more water bottle filling stations by the gym. When she finished talking, Ervin leaned in for a hug, and didn’t let go when Mia tried to step back. When she finally pulled away, he laughed and said, “C’mon, don’t be like that, you know you’re hot.”
Lila said kids at school are split: half say it’s just an out-of-touch boomer who doesn’t know any better, no harm done. The other half say it’s creepy and he should lose his seat. I saw the same split on our local parent Facebook group that night: “He’s getting older, he didn’t mean anything” “Mia should have just said something right then” “Why ruin a good man’s reputation over one offhand comment.”
I thought back to when I was 15, the same age as Mia. My dad’s best friend, a deacon at our small town church, did almost the exact same thing at a church picnic: hugged me after I helped him carry a tray of cookies, squeezed my waist and said I’d gotten “so hot all of a sudden.” I didn’t say anything to anyone for 10 years. I talked myself into believing I’d overreacted, that I misread it, that no one would believe me because he was such a “good guy.” That story stuck with me through all these years, so Ervin’s incident didn’t feel like some distant, random scandal to me. It felt familiar.
A week later, I went to the school board meeting where the incident was on the public agenda. I sat in the back and listened for two hours. A few women stood up and said Ervin had said similar things to them when they were students 10, 20 years ago. Other parents stood up and said political correctness has gone too far, it was one mistake, and Ervin has done too much good for the district to throw him out. The board ended up voting 4-3 to censure him. He didn’t apologize, just said he was “joking around” and people overreacted. He didn’t resign, so recall petitions are being passed around at the grocery store right now. It’s messy, no one left the meeting happy, and nothing is resolved cleanly.
After that meeting, I sat down with my two teens, Lila 16 and Jake 14, to talk about it, and I realized I’d been giving them half-baked advice about boundaries up until that point. I’d always said “if someone makes you uncomfortable, tell a grown-up” but I never gave them specific words to use, and I never explicitly told them it’s okay to make a fuss even when the person who crossed the line is important or well-liked.
So what changed for our family? First, I gave them specific phrases they can use when talking to me or another trusted adult, instead of just saying “it was weird.” If someone makes your skin crawl, you can say “he stood so close I couldn’t step back” “he hugged me when I didn’t want to be hugged” “he said something about my body that made me uncomfortable.” That specificity makes it a lot harder for adults to brush off the comment as “you being too sensitive.”
Second, I explicitly told them that their right to feel safe in their body comes before anyone’s title, reputation, or decades of community service. So many of us grow up being told to respect adults no matter what, to not rock the boat. I told them if the school board member, their coach, their math teacher, my best friend’s husband, anyone, does something that feels off, they don’t have to be polite. They can step back, they can say “don’t touch me” out loud, and they can come to me, and I won’t ask what you were wearing or if you led someone on. I will believe you first.
Third, for any other parent reading this, I learned that the first job isn’t to investigate or fix the problem immediately. If your kid comes to you with something like this, the first thing you say is, “Thank you for telling me. That sounds really uncomfortable. I believe you, and we’ll figure out what to do next together.” You don’t have to call the superintendent that same night if your kid isn’t ready for that. The first step is just holding space for them, not rushing to defend the “good guy.”
A lot of people in town keep asking why Mia didn’t say something right then, but think about it: she’s 15, he’s a 60-something man who controls the district’s budget and sets school policy. She worked hard on her water fountain proposal, and she was excited to get one-on-one time with him to talk about it. Of course she froze. That’s not her fault. That’s how power works, and teens are still learning how to push back against authority figures they’re taught to trust.
Right now, the whole thing is still up in the air. Ervin’s still on the board, the recall effort needs 300 more signatures to get on the ballot, and Mia changed her student council schedule so she doesn’t have to attend meetings Ervin is at. A lot of people are tired of talking about it, just want the whole thing to go away. But for me, it wasn’t just local gossip. It made me stop and check what I’m actually teaching my kids about boundaries and speaking up. It’s easy to say “that would never happen to my kid” but the truth is, these small, uncomfortable moments happen all the time, almost always with someone everyone thinks is a good guy.
I still don’t have all the answers. I don’t know how the recall will go, I don’t know if Mia will ever get a real apology. But I do know that the next time one of my kids comes to me and says someone made them uncomfortable, I’ll know what to say first. And that’s more than I had before this whole thing started.
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