593
Zero discretion policies come home to roost.
Neutrality is oppression when oppression is the norm.
Bullies rarely get in trouble. Because if they do, their bully parents show up at the school up bully the faculty and drive them crazy for daring to discipline their little shit stain. That's why it's always the victim who gets in trouble.
Also because schools like to claim that they are bully free. Actually addressing bullying problems is hard, but sweeping incidents under the rug is extremely easy.
When my oldest son was in the third grade, a kid jumped in front of him in line (ironically going to an anti-bullying assembly). My son put his hands up to his face since the kid was so close to him. The kid then kicked my son in the side so hard that he left a shoe print on my son's side.
The next day I had a meeting with the teacher, assistant teacher, and the principal about the incident. First, they told me that nobody saw what happened. Then, they told me that my son started it by putting his hands up to protect his face. Finally, the principal told me that my son "isn't the type of kid to be bullied."
At that point, I knew I wouldn't get anywhere with them. They were trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug so they wouldn't need to deal with it. I left the meeting and my wife and I pulled our child from that school. We contacted the superintendent and raised a fuss until they agreed to put our son in another school. (He did a lot better there and now is thriving in college.)
My daughter was bullied so badly by so many kids in her middle school that she woke up one day, broke down and told us she just couldn't face going there anymore. We took her out that day and put her in online school. This was after begging and pleading with the administration to do something about the bullying. The best they did was lecture both the worst bully and her to not fight. This was the day after this bully doxxed her- and therefore our family- and started prank calling her. We don't even know how she got that information. The school didn't care.
Online school is going to be hard. I had to quit my job to help her. But we would rather go down to a single income than have her deal with one more day of that.
I'm having trouble because my kids are huge. Someone punches or shoves them, they don't move. We've managed to stop the reaction, but when they push back the other kid goes flying. Almost all instances corroborated by staff. My kids get punished.
I'm happy for your son, but the fact that these people who are supposed to look after children are so systematically cruel makes my blood boil. Not only for the lack of justice, but because most likely there are children who were in your son's situation in that school who have been suffering much worse.
That or the bully isn't impacted because they don't give a shit about school to begin with. A suspension is just get out of school pass. Meanwhile the kid who cares about school is actually put behind on their schooling.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Yep. Bully parents show up with their bully attorneys to bully the district in court. Zero Tolerance exists to protect the school, not the students. That way, in court their lawyers can point to it and say, "Our hands are clean! We have a Zero Tolerance policy! Per district policy, we cannot take sides!"
My wife is half Jamaican and half Iranian, she went to a school in a very working class part of a very ethnically diverse city in the UK, with most of the school having a familial origin in the middle east or India.
She was routinely bullied for being black and called the N word on a daily basis. She was made to feel like a troublemaker for reporting it to teachers and eventually snapped, her kickboxing lessons helped her break a boy's nose with a kick to the face after years of abuse, and she got suspended for it while nobody ever faced any consequences for their racism.
People don't want to punish wrongdoing, they want to keep things "simple" and not have to deal with anything they feel awkward about, so they ignore the repeated "small" incidents and only acted to punish the retaliation because it's deemed disproportionate. Years of racism to the point of having no friends because people were scared of being seen to sympathise apparently isn't as damaging as an afternoon in A+E and some minor discomfort for a week or so. Fuck that school and fuck this mentality.
This story seems like a worse version and we're 20 years on. I'm sure it happens way more than we see in stories like these, they're just swept under the rug and hope nobody calls them on it. Fuck this backwards ass world.
This is a great observation that explains so many ills with our society when the victim is punished. People collectively don't care about justice. They only care about minimizing discomfort. Retaliation is only viewed as the original "source" of trouble making more trouble. I saw this same story play out for a coworker who was bullied by her male coworkers. The "guys" didn't appreciate her around and made her life miserable, so of course she acted out. Thier boss tried to sympathize with her but ultimately didn't protect her because she was one and they were many. Their boss started to view her as a pain in the ass because she would constantly report small injustices that on their own wouldn't be considered harassment.
i remember this story from 30 years ago. here it is; no administrator wants to/is allowed to make a decision. so everyone gets the same punishment, and no actual judgments are made as everyone is at fault.
schools administrators can now be replaced with a matrix of policy, they need no longer be human. this is what happens when parents sue school districts into the ground.
But by doing this are they not opening themselves to even worse lawsuits? A student was called a racial slur and hospitalized and they're handing her the same punishment as the aggressor.
According to the article, racism is a systemic problem in this school. One of the school officials, yelled at some black kids because they were walking down the hall together and thus "were looking intimidating."
When the administration is racist, they're willing to overlook students being racist.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Lots of people showing up real fast to make excuses for white supremacists doing white supremacism.... now why does that sound so familiar?
Oh, right... I'm South African!
You ain't wrong. Went through the comments here and goddamn some of y'all need Jesus.
Also, Sawubona! Unjani?
load more comments
(1 replies)
y'all ever notice how "zero tolerance" only kicks in once the black girl tries to defend herself? It wasn't zero tolerance when they were shouting racial slurs at her. That was simply tolerated. It wasn't zero tolerance when the white boy beat the shit out of her. When she refused to just quietly take the abuse, however, then "we have zero tolerance for hate or violence of any kind and therefore we have no choice but to suspend both students".
Rights for whites, no slack for blacks.
Conservatives should not be permitted to hold jobs related to children.
Should be protest held outside that school and the homes of the administration until they resign our removed and the student should be unsupended.
This is Amerikkka.
United States of Fascism
I'm glad this story is going viral. I was appalled when I heard about it last night.
School logic.
Defense against bullies is actually terrorism I'll have you know.
Not even surprised
I don't miss KC at fucking all.
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
593 points (95.3% liked)
News
23293 readers
4569 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS