Wisconsin superintendent breaks silence after angry father shoves him away from his daughter at graduation
The Wisconsin high school superintendent shoved aside by a father who didn’t want the educator to shake his daughter’s hand isn’t ready to put the incident behind him, and slammed the father’s attempted apology.
Dr. Rainey Briggs, the head of Baraboo School District, said an apology won’t fix the damage Matthew Eddy caused at Baraboo High School’s graduation ceremony on May 31
“An apology just doesn’t make things go away,” Briggs told the Daily Mail on Tuesday.
“The outreach was really to indicate that he, Matthew, understands his mishap in terms of what he did, what he’s caused. He’s remorseful.” Briggs said. “I took that as some form of apology, but that’s not something I think at this time amounts to a solid apology, from my perspective.”
Eddy was caught on camera leaping to the stage as his daughter was collecting her diploma at the Baraboo High graduation ceremony last month, grabbing Briggs and pushing him aside, saying, “I don’t want her touching him.”
‘”I don’t think an apology, an ‘I’m sorry,’ makes this go away because there’s a lot of harm that was caused.”
Eddy was escorted out of the building and arrested for disorderly conduct, and Briggs secured a restraining order against him.
The 49-year-old father claimed he pulled Briggs away in response to the school official allegedly rolling his eyes during a prior disciplinary hearing when his daughter was facing expulsion.
“I did not want him to be able to shake her f—king hand because he does not deserve it from her, after all the s–t she went through in this district,” Eddy told police in the video, obtained by WISN.
“He rolled his eyes when I brought up the fact the same thing happened to her and it pissed me off,” the father said the school wasn’t treating his daughter fairly.
“She was expelled for doing the same thing that was done to her, and nothing was done to the previous people,” Eddy added.
Briggs claimed he didn’t recognize Eddy when he rushed the stage despite Eddy telling police his bizarre act was payback for the perceived slight.
“I have not personally had any interactions with him,’ the school’s chief said. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to pick this guy out of any crowd. It wasn’t until after that I was able to pull his name up in the system to see who this was.”
Briggs feels bad for Eddy’s daughter and the other 250 graduates who attended the ceremony.
“This is a moment in time for them that they’ll never get back the way they had hoped for this to go,” he added. “That was to walk across that stage with excitement, feeling like they’ve learned a lot, feeling like they’d experienced some amazing teachers. That was all to some degree pushed aside that particular night.”
The superintendent, who is black and took over the position in July 2021, isn’t sure if he was targeted on stage because of his race.
“The optics don’t look good,” Briggs added. “The optics are what people around the world have gotten to see. And it’s caused them to formulate in their minds what was behind this situation.”
“But ultimately, Mr. Eddy is the only one that could tell you whether it was racial or not.”
Eddy’s statements to the police following the incident seemingly contradict Brigg’s statement as the father-daughter duo “have had past issues with Rainey and dislike him.”
Eddy told police he “wanted to prevent Rainey from having the satisfaction of shaking her hand.”
