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Alma Mater Getting Sued
#1
I grew up in a small town out in the boondocks of upstate NY called Marion NY. The high school I graduated from is getting sued by a parent of a current student due to the kid getting bullied in the school for being gay. The whole ambiance of the school and town was very homophobic when I was growing up there. I am so glad I got out of the god forsaken town when I did and moved to SC. Here is a news link to the local story:
http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story/M...autoplay=1
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#2
Suing the school won't change the bullies.

Most (not all) bullies are acting out, they are bullies due to neglect and or abuse or even being bullied by their own parents. Its a control issue thing, the bully has no control at home or elsewhere thus takes control and bullies 'easy prey' at school.

The school disciplines the bully, who goes home to get more bullying from their parent(s), the bully ends up needed to bully some more in order to win back a little more control that they lost. Its a vicious cycle.

The parents of the students doing the bullying need to be held accountable, not the schools. Holding those parents accountable may actually stop the bully from being a bully since the parent(s) bullying him/her are not part of public scrutiny and open to being investigated by CPS.

We need to stop looking at the bullies and the schools as the problem, we need to address the reason WHY the bully is a bully in the first place.
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#3
While I do agree that suing the school won't change the bully, I think it just feels good to do it because the one who's the last line of defense for the victim fail to even do anything about the situation.
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#4
I think you have a point, Bowyn, but it's only part of the pic. In all too many schools (and even colleges) jocks are given a God complex by their schools and sometimes even community. Bullying is just one type of obnoxious behavior they get away with that the goths, stoners, and the like would never be allowed to. In extreme cases they sexually molest or even gang rape (at least once they felt so entitled they RECORDED themselves gang raping a retarded girl in the gym and showed it off), and even then they are sometimes given a free pass. School faculties that are zero tolerance over a pair of knitting needles or showing too much skin have been known to even try to keep their jocks from being arrested for gang rape (that time the jocks recorded themselves gang raping, their principal tried to keep them from being arrested, and IIRC, tried to destroy the footage, and he also refused to get help for their victim).

My school was like that. The cheerleaders drove at least one girl to attempt suicide, tormented others, and even got away with putting one in the hospital. The jocks would bully--and I mean the violent kind--right in front of faculty and the victims were told by the school (and at least some parents agreed) that their victims--typically goth, gay (or perceived as such), geek, etc--brought it on themselves by agitating others with their weirdness (of course they were also told to "be themselves" at other times as well Rolleyes). On game days at lunch the jocks would put several tables together, literally throwing kids out of their chairs if they refused to move, and the faculty saw it, did nothing, and came down on any kid who resisted for their lack of school spirit. And one boy I saw them trip, push, shove into walls, etc, right in front of me and the school faculty (and worse was done to him when no one was around) one day brought a knife to school and stabbed one of the jocks when they ganged up on him again in the lunch room. Of course the faculty acted shocked and claimed they knew of no problem (liars) and the stabbed boy was given sympathy while their victim was sent to a reform school.

The cheerleaders ganged up on me though when I attacked the head cheerleader it was one on one until her football player boyfriend lifted me off her and punched me so hard that I couldn't stand as I had no balance. My male classmates then tackled him and beat the crap out of him. The next morning I was called into the Principal's office and he KNEW what those jocks and cheerleaders did and didn't care. Even though my face was so battered I talked funny he even tried to guilt me over the boys beating up the football player who punched me in the face because the player would miss the next game. The boys who beat up the jock all got suspension (some in school and some out of school) and I was given in school suspension as well. The football player and the cheerleader just got their sympathy.

And crap like that goes on in all too many schools. And it's the jocks. If the goths were to beat up on people in the lunch room, if they were the ones to throw kids out of their chairs and take their table, if they were just as obnoxious as a jock, the school rightly wouldn't tolerate it as it disrupts the learning environment. But they WILL tolerate and ENABLE jocks to terrorize others, and they know it and take full advantage of it, even feeling entitled to it. And for that to change the schools have to be held accountable as well.
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#5
I guess I got kind of lucky at my school, ANYBODY that did anything wrong received the same punishment. we still had bullies but it never went as far as beating some one half to death or pushing some one to commit suicide. plus it helped that our assistant administrator was an out gay man and there was a buff gay couple in the school Biggrina actually the biggest problem was the teaching quality and the books were freakishly old.
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#6
Until criminalize bullying as a hate crime , this will sadly continue.
They need zero tolerance for this .
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#7
I know you mean well Bowyn, but I'm sick and tired of people making excuses for bullies, by saying that the bullies themselves are victims of abuse or are getting bullied at home or have a hellish home life, it doesn't matter. Guess what I had a miserable childhood and not once did I ever harass a classmate, because I had a conscience and I knew it was wrong. In psychology when you lash out at people because of what's going on in your life it's called projection, it's a coping mechanism, but there are hundreds of not thousands of other ways to cope.
It was,nt too long ago that I was a kid and I wasn't dumb and neither were my peers. So they know that people are being harassed to the point of suicide and simply don't care. When I was bullied in elementary school, the teachers didn't care either, I remember asking them for help only to hear " I'm not a babysitter in response. Unfortunately I know firsthand that the only way to deal with bullies is through physical violence (thank God I was big for my age). Once these bullies learn that projecting their emotional pain on to others will only bring them physical pain they stop.
Suing the schools will not change the bullies true. But in a country (America) where the almighty dollar reigns supreme, heavy fines will change the teachers and administrators. It will force them to do something. CPS in this country is highly dysfunctional, often they simply shuttle children from their abusive biological families to abusive foster homes,
Another thing I don't understand is hate crime laws. How is it worse if you kill me because of my sexuality than if you kill me because you hate my personality?
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#8
Person66 Wrote:Another thing I don't understand is hate crime laws. How is it worse if you kill me because of my sexuality than if you kill me because you hate my personality?

The theory behind hate crimes is that they not only target the individual, they target and terrorize an entire community. For example, the torture-murder of Matthew Shepherd sent a message to all other gay people in the area: "stay in the closet or get out or this can happen to you, too." If say a jilted boyfriend--or perhaps the wife or girlfriend of a guy who dumped her for him--were to have arranged for the same horrifying treatment then it wouldn't be a hate crime because it wouldn't send a death threat against all gays in the community. That's the difference.

In short, a hate crime doubles as a terrorist threat against an entire group of people, because the victim is chosen simply because s/he is a member of the said group and all other members of that same group know they can be next which serves to intimidate them all into silence or fleeing or otherwise living in fear. It's not that gays or whatever are somehow more special as individuals as opponents of hate crime legislation like to say the law implies, and if some other motive applies (such as jealousy or business deal gone bad) then it's not targeting whatever community and so it's not a hate crime as it's not meant to terrorize an entire group.
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#9
Bowyn Aerrow Wrote:We need to stop looking at the bullies and the schools as the problem, we need to address the reason WHY the bully is a bully in the first place.
WTF; what ever gets this to end, the schools should get with the flow on this. The OP has stated homophobia was the norm in the school for years.
Gay straight or bi the students and teachers should feel absolutely safe, kinda the minimum for learning. Better you feel to get beaten up at work, harassed, same thing except it is happening to a child.

i got a low cost plan:
Students get into a fight harassment; they go to court, get expelled, their parents and children go on probation as a family. The court should make the whole family as a team clean toilets for community service probation. They attend parent-child training classes at their cost.

zero tolerance could be fun!
[Image: images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQtX52eOvQ0xfM8kzlHNNH...uF3otTA4xQ]
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#10
Bullying happens in every school and will continue to happen in every school and in most cases it seems no staff could give a crap. I wasn't horrendously bullied but I was picked on every now and then. There were really just two of them. But out of school now, these people who bullied me are now sucking at life to be honest. One of them is in prison for GBH and the other is an alcoholic. Bullies are just insecure, usually jealous but cannot always be balmed on the parents. The person i mentioned about, in prison, his mum is a really nice lady who is a typical community person. I feel sorry for her.

Rant over Smile
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