Board members: TV in Ryan Walters’ office displayed nude women during executive session

Two members of the Oklahoma State Board of Education were “shocked and mad” when they saw a video featuring “naked women” on the television screen in Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters’ office during the executive session portion of Thursday’s meeting.

While neither Becky Carson nor Ryan Deatherage could tell what video was displaying nude women on Walters’ office TV, each told NonDoc they were the only people seated in a position to see the screen. Deatherage said he noticed the video first while a parent was speaking about her appeal of a district transfer denial. As Deatherage weighed his options about how to bring the video to the room’s attention, Carson noticed the nudity.

“I was like, ‘What am I seeing?’ I kind of was in shock, honestly. I started to question whether I was actually seeing what I was seeing,” Carson said. “I was like, ‘Is that woman naked?’ And then I was like, ‘No, she’s got a body suit on.’ And it happened very quickly, I was like, ‘That is not a body suit.’ And I hate to even use these terms, but I said, ‘Those are her nipples.’ And then I was looking closer, and I got a full-body view, and I was like, ‘That is pubic hair.’ Even right now, I couldn’t even tell you what I was watching.”

As Carson processed what she was seeing, she said “the mama bear and teacher in me came out” and she “stopped the meeting cold” by confronting Walters.

“I was so disturbed by it, that I was like — very loudly and boastfully, like I was a parent or a teacher — I said, ‘What is on your TV? What am I watching?’ He was like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ He stood up and saw it. He made acknowledgment that he saw it,” Carson recalled. “And I said, ‘Turn it off. Now.’ And he was like, ‘What is this? What is this?’ So he acknowledged it was inappropriate just by those words. And he was like, ‘I can’t get it to turn off. I can’t figure out how to turn it off.’ And I said, ‘Get it turned off.’ So he finally got it turned off, and that was the end of it. He didn’t address it. He didn’t apologize. Nothing was said.”

While both board members described the footage as “retro” in nature but not involving sexual intercourse, Deatherage recalled seeing multiple nude women on the screen and some sort of “chiropractic table.” He found Walters’ reaction to the situation confounding.

“I don’t know if he turned it off or switched the channel, I don’t remember,” Deatherage said. “I was surprised that when he came back to the table, he was not apologetic. I didn’t ever hear an apology for that being on, and he didn’t seem to be fazed that it was on.”

Carson said Walters “blew it off” and acted as if he had “just been caught” in an embarrassing situation.

“Like a teenager when you walk in the room and they’re doing something they’re not supposed to be doing,” Carson said.

Deatherage wants Walters’ teaching certificate suspended

Asked about the situation, Walters’ latest director of communications, Quinton Hitchcock, responded with a pointed statement Friday afternoon.

“What an absolute joke of a story and this is embarrassing from you to write a junk tabloid lie,” Hitchcock wrote in an email. “Any number of people have access to these offices, you have a hostile board who will say and do anything except tell the truth, and now, ‘NonsenseDoc’ is reporting on an alleged random TV cable image. Rock solid truth in journalism.”

Asked whether his reference to “a junk tabloid lie” means that he is claiming the video incident did not happen, Hitchcock responded: “Go get a job at The Lost Ogle and let us know when you are going to write a real story.”

Walters, however, has repeatedly railed against “sexual material” during his term as state superintendent, equating certain books to “pornography” and attempting to ban them from school libraries.

“We have seen too many instances of our children being exposed to this radical, sexual material that’s being pushed on us by the teacher’s unions and by the Biden administration. One instance of this is way too much,” Walters said in a March 2023 video recorded in his car about a new rule about classroom materials.

The State Board of Education regularly reviews complaints made against teachers and school staff members that involve allegations of misconduct. With that in mind, Deatherage and Carson each said Thursday’s bizarre scenario demands some sort of action toward Walters.

“Besides the shock value and the disturbance of it all and how it affected me as a woman, I think it’s the double standard,” Carson said. “The accountability we are putting on teachers — and we should, I’m not saying we shouldn’t hold teachers accountable — but we’re looking at teachers sometimes with lesser offenses.”

Deatherage said he believes that any other educator who accidentally displayed a nude video at their workplace would face a complaint, investigation and possibly ramifications.

“I believe that Superintendent Walters should be held accountable just like we would any other school teacher, which means at this point — based on other things we’ve looked at in executive session — we would probably pull his (teaching) certificate and put him on his own list,” Deatherage said. “We should treat it the same.”

House Common Education Committee Chairman Dick Lowe (R-Amber) attended Thursday’s meeting and briefly joined the executive session under state statute that allows lawmakers entry. While he could not see the TV from his vantage point and left the meeting before Carson confronted Walters, Lowe said he has discussed the situation with both board members who did witness the video.

“Shocked would be maybe an understatement a little bit. In the position that that person is in, that’s absolutely without a question not appropriate by any means for any state official, much less that state official,” Lowe said. “I guess you’re never prepared for situations like this, because it’s not in my mindset that that kind of stuff would be going on. But evidently that’s where we’re at, and that’s what we’ll have to deal with.”

Lowe said he has relayed the situation to House Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow).

“We’re going to find out what the law says we do,” Lowe said. “We’re not going to try to make law or devise plans or anything like that. We’re going to find out what are the appropriate steps. I’ve talked to the speaker. We’re going to do the right thing.”