Ana Teague and Nora Regis Odland step down as administrators of the Facebook group "The Croton Point."
The Facebook group was a focal point for debates about the Croton-Harmon school board elections, housing development, and other burning issues in the community.
Two powerful moderators of discussions of issues and events in the Croton community have resigned as administrators of “The Croton Point” Facebook group today. In posts on the site very close in time, Ana Teague, president of the Croton-Harmon Board of Education, and Nora Regis Odland, a long-time community activist, announced that they would remain members of the group but would step down from leading it.
“These are crazy, polarizing times,” Teague wrote, adding that “it has become too easy for so many in this community to attack me, my friends, my family, and my other work in this community by making general statements about my oversight (as one of four caring women moderating a page) and jumping to conclusions about my personal values or character.”
Regis Odland explained, “Having a blogger with a personal vendetta against me monitor these disputes through some of you takes a tremendous toll. It is a huge time sink to deal with the messages.” She indicated that the disputes over the school board election were a significant part of that toll: “It has felt like there is no way to de-escalate the disputes this week, and people do not respect that others can disagree with them. There is no spirit of good faith or respect for free speech. It is not the group I wanted to foster.”
“The Croton Point” was formed in late July 2020 by a group of participants in the Croton Community [Facebook] Group, who, in part, felt that as the Covid-19 pandemic began to rage the Community group did not allow enough free discussion of the contentious issues about how best to address that situation. Ironically, the administrators of The Croton Point later came under criticism from a number of members of the community for themselves laying too heavy a hand on discussions and engaging in overly aggressive moderation.
Nevertheless, at the end of her statement today, Teague wrote the following:
“Five years is a long run. I’m proud of the space we created here for our community at a time when the world was upside down. When other pages were kicking people off and limiting discussions, we were talking about things in our community and around the world.”
[Full disclosure: The editor of the Chronicle, along with two other members of the group, were ejected from The Croton Point around the summer of 2023, for comments that Teague and other administrators found objectionable. The Croton Chronicle was launched soon after afterwards, and the publication has often been critical of Ana Teague’s leadership of the Board of Education, as well as her recent role in the election campaign; the editor of the Chronicle has also engaged in occasional sharp public debates with Nora Regis Odland on another Facebook group.]
While both The Croton Point and the Croton Community Group are listed on Facebook as “private” groups, with around 2,000 and 3,000 members, respectively, in a village with around 6,000 adults they actually operate as quasi-public groups and major centers for community discussion. We have often been told privately by members of both groups that they feel intimidated about making comments that might get them banned.
Many residents of the village and the school district have also raised with us privately whether it was a conflict of interest for Teague, as president of the school board, to also be an administrator of a major social media group in the village, where she had the power to moderate discussions about the school district and even the power to facilitate the ejection of group members. Teague did not cite this potential conflict as a reason for her resignation, however.
We think that Croton is lucky to have a number of Facebook pages, as well as two media outlets—The Gazette and The Croton Chronicle—to facilitate community discussions. We expect that these discussions and debates, as sharp as they can sometimes be, will continue to thrive long into the future.
*************************************************************************************************************
To share this post, or to share The Croton Chronicle, please click on these links.
Comments policy: No personal attacks, please be polite and respectful at all times.
Good. Two of the most divisive people in the village.