In a shocking, horrifying incident at Shawnee Mission East High School, a Black student was hospitalized after being attacked by a white male student. Despite being the victim, she faces suspension in a case highlighting systemic racism and administrative negligence.
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.
As a big kid the short bullies wanted to start a fight with, my trick was to go bigger, louder, and be aggressively non-violent to a point. Get the attention of everyone in the room and make it clear what is going down. Psycho analyze the little shit and be loudly empathetic to their shitty home life. Make it clear that I have no ill will towards said bully despite the bullying because I pity them. Make it clear that I have no shame to use against me. Do all of this as loudly as possible. Speak from the belly to project without screeching. I never got reprimanded for being loud and weird.
This worked for the type of bullies I got, results may vary. I watched a lot of MacGuyver, Dr. Who, Star Trek, and animal documentaries as a kids. The through line of all of those was finding less violent solutions to your problems, especially avoiding guns and weapons. If you watch animal documentaries, there are two basic types of violent encounters between animals: predator/prey and same species mating/territorial stand offs. The thing to realize is that the same species disputes rarely do much damage. They’re all about making a show. Bullies aren’t predators, they’re hormonal teenagers. Give them a confusing show and they’re more likely to loose interest. Again, situations vary and different tactics may be required, but the main thing is to be get creatively non-violent.
deleted by creator
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!”
deleted by creator
Yea. I know that’s their language.
deleted by creator
damn i didnt even notice until it was pointed out. they really call it that??? why not just call it “zero empathy”? they could stretch that to mean the same thing
zero
toleranceintelligence policy
Zero tolerance is where the both sides argument originates.
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.
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?
Same thing happens here in South Africa every time white supremacists are caught on camera doing their thing… white liberals will fall over themselves to make up justifications and excuses for their behavior. It’s about as predictable as clockwork.
Sorry, I never learned isiZulu - I know a bit of Sesotho, but it’s about as good as my German (ie, crap).
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.
I always hate the blurred lines of administrative disciplinary action or criminal investigation. What is the schools role if a criminal investigation is underway.
Also, I think the article is missing some key facts, like durations of suspensions. I think some could argue that both the boy and girl deserve some suspension, but it by no means should be equal suspension given the racial charged aggression. Is there a difference between a closed fist punch versus a shove? Who through the first punch?
Did the article even mention the date this occurred? It just says last week, which was a holiday week. So come Tuesday not sure how long the suspensions have even been served and what the administration is deciding for next steps.
She defended herself after he attacked her you goob.
There is no defensible argument for suspending her. She very clearly defended herself.
“If someone starts to assault you just say ‘no thank you.’
It’s against the rules for them to continue.”Actually you can see she’s the one who went for the face first. He was just provoking and pushing.
Bullies rarely start physically attacking people, they just provoke until the victim snaps so they have the green light and can say they’re not the ones who started it. That’s why it’s so hard to frame stuff like this, victims are in a situation of emotional stress and more prone to be impulsive, while bullies know what they’re doing and how to be able to “play the victim” afterwards.
Then it’s time to fire all Shawnee Mission East’s administrators.
I wonder if it would fall under the umbrella of a civil rights violation, in federal court.
Or fire all the parents.
Or just, yknow, tort reform.
Tort reform isn’t the solution here. Tort reform is used as a cudgel to let bad actors get away with bad actions with minimal consequences. What needs to happen is the State AG needs to step in and defend schools in these cases so the school districts aren’t left to their own legal defense.
But doesn’t that depend on how it’s enacted? Writing new laws can go however the author wants it to.
This all comes back to school board elections. How much information is typically available about school board candidates?
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.
deleted by creator
Why would the obvious outcome need to be in the title? The problem being highlighted is punishing the victim.
I completely agree, but I don’t think there are any more schools in the US that won’t suspend the target of the harassment as well. I talked about this in another recent thread, but a kid in my school was punched in the back of the head when he had no idea it was coming and got the same suspension length as the one who threw the punch
And then they fucking wonder why kids are driven to become school shooters.
Schools are pro bullying. Abolish school
Any more? I got suspended for being bullied a few times in the 90s. Sometimes the bully also got in trouble, seems to have a high correlation with if their sport was in season. I guess when the whole team sucks you need the mediocre players more.
Because it’s a misrepresentation of the situation, a better title would be: “School Hate Crime: Racist Kid Yells “N Word” While Attacking Black Girl, Breaks Her Nose And Hospitalizes Her, but both get suspended”
Is this normal in lemmy now? The guys has a good point, but got more downpoints.
Yeah the rosy days of Lemmy that invited discourse only lasted a few months.
deleted by creator
Yeah bro, that title and description are definitely not trying to race bait folks 👍
He should be expelled. Maybe one day he’ll get his punishment. But those parents of hers I bet are talking to a expensive lawyer,
deleted by creator
They forgot that in the title.
Doesn’t belong in the title. No victim blaming.
Also that dude fights like a bitch.
How does “a bitch” fight? Doesn’t seem like you have much respect for women either.
What you talking about?
Including the bull’s suspension as well in the title wouldn’t be victim blaming, it’s not even like victim blaming adjacent.
“student punches another student and gets suspended”
I don’t see any victim blame whatsoever here… Why is your comment in the negative? There’s something unspoken behind conversations like this and I have absolutely no clue what exactly that is…
I understand the downvotes for comments along the lines of “there’s two sides to any argument”… I understand the victim blaming aspect of that, but “the bully got suspended”? I’m missing something…
Anyone?
deleted by creator
Having to lock this post because you guys just can’t keep it civil
Hey Paul Rudd… your old school sucks.
