Gash
High school was supposed to be the best years of our lives? fark that - thats what COLLEGE is for!

/hated HS

What is with every new sentence having its own paragraph in articles nowadays? It seems so unnecessary...

My apologies for the bold...
I could've sworn I turned it off at the end of 'chip's name.

ylikone [TotalFark]
Was even sexually assaulted by some obviously abused-at-home kid.

Had you called him a 'faggot' afterwards, you would have been tossed in juvi and the school would have been made to pay $250K.

Ultimately the is probably farking brilliant.

Want bullying to go away? Hit the schoolboards in the pocketbook.

Guaranteed they'll have a zero-tolerance policy in place pretty damn fast.

No more bullying on school gounds. Just that easy.

This is exactly like taking someone down to establish your balls. In this case the people you're taking down are the ones who are supposed to be doing their damn job anyway - the teachers and administrators. Hit them like that once and see if the problem ever happens again.

Saying that the Columbine shooters were bullied is a myth. In fact they were bullies themselves. Eric Harris threatened the life of Brooks Brown. Dylan Klebold liked to pick on a mentally handicapped kid. They were psychopaths pure and simple.

As for this kid. He sued the school and won but how does this punish the bullies?

nick4753:
Before the inevitable crying... read the article.

The school district knew about it and didn't do anything... if schools won't do anything to prevent harassment out of the shear principal of being proactive in it, then maybe the threat of financial repercussions is more appropriate

Yep. And you know as well as I do that this thread will be full of asshats making fun of the kid - they're as low as the bullies. I am not even going to bother reading this thread because I know the heartlessness of many of the people who will post is just going to piss me off.

eraser8

All the school had to do was hand out suspensions when he came and complained. There's more to being called names than just a word or two. If the kids were going on tirades and doing it all the time, there's no defense for it.

shear principal
That is all.

This is not a solution, this is a money grab. Bullying has been around for a long, long time. If you can't handle it, drop out and home school, get a GED, and move on, like a few people I know did. What can the school do to these bullies, besides talk to them and say "hey you gotta stop that"? Do you think they write him nice notes saying "Hi Fag. See you at lunch. - Joe" on them? It's prolly random shiat in the hallways and difficult to enforce.

Everyone biatches and complains about the Zero Tolerance policies and the insanity in how we handle school children these days. Stupid lawsuits like this are the reason for it. You are not entitled to living a sweet and fluffy life, and if you don't like where you're at, change it. Just don't make the world pay for it.

more fun times in Kansas!!

actually i live ten niles from tonganoxie where this happened and we are talking major-league redneck action.

(see kansas was settled originally by competing groups from the north and south that wanted to make kansas a free state or slave state. so you have legacy towns that have folks that either all go to their southern baptist church or their congregational or anglican church)--funny how all the slave state towns are little podunks and the free state settlements went on to be the big cities

MrBojangles

I dunno schools have these things called detention, suspension and expulsion. Why not use those? As in say "You do it once? You get suspended. Do it again? You get expelled, no exceptions".

so much for school being an environment of positive learning.

/should have been home-schooled
//was also bullied

eraser8

Simple because no one has any business taunting or teasing anyone. If they feel they do? They can take the punishment they get. If a kid doesn't feel safe at school there's more going on them being called a fag.

MrBojangles

Hard to change things when the people running the school pretend like the problem doesn't exist.

Our state passed a "anti-bullying" law last year because it seems to be important to protect our kids from reality. Wait 'til these pantywaists find out how the adult world operates.

/act like a man

mindbomb33

At most jobs you taunt someone you get fired pretty quick. Also bullying isn't reality, given some of it crosses into the realms of assualt, battery, attempted assault and battery and so on. Well that is reality, but it gets your arrested.

Simple because no one has any business taunting or teasing anyone. If they feel they do? They can take the punishment they get. If a kid doesn't feel safe at school there's more going on them being called a fag.

I just don't know how I feel about this issue. I mean, it's not like bully's are going to magically going to go way when you finish high school. There are always going to be asshats around who want to put other down.

Isn't high school supposed to be a way to prepare kids for the future? If so, should the schools allow a small amount of bullying, to teach kids how to ignore it, how to stand up for themselves? We can't shelter them forever, I'd say best to experience bullying in a relatively controlled setting (highschool) and then take action if it gets out of hand.

Maybe this did get out of hand, I don't know, there was not much information in the report.

/Went to public school
//Bullied for being a "geek"
///Who's laughing now?

MrBojangles:

You are not entitled to living a sweet and fluffy life, and if you don't like where you're at, change it.

Exactly. This is using the rule of law to change things.

Lots of stupid crap used to be legal, and now is not.

don't know why the SPIFFY tag, where do you think the $250k comes from to pay the kid

Kansas. I hate this state.

I just don't see why bullies are going to care if the school loses money or not. Enact all the anti-bullying rules you want it won't stop it.

ColumbianDrugLord

How often did your lunch money get taken away? Must've been a lot for you to develop that attitude. Worse you thougth you deserved it. And that it's ok for it to happen, not just to you but everyone else.

rhiannon

I don't let anyone bully anyone else in my presence. Also don't let people talk about others behind their back, you want to say something about someone? Say it to their face.

I had a friend who used to get picked on by the girls in his science class every day. Then one day one of them took his book and wouldn't give it back. He asked her for it back and when she didn't he smashed her face into the desk breaking her nose. A little extreme but nobody ever said a word to him again.

2wolves
Yep.

mindbomb33

Wait 'til these pantywaists find out how the adult world operates.

Yes, and they will really be able to be successful as adults when they've been systematically conditioned as children to live a constant state of fear. Great thinking. People who were abused as children don't become successful adults without a shiatload of therapy.

I repeat, bullying is a child abuse issue. It has the same emotional consequences as beatings and molestation. Just because the abusers are children themselves makes no difference to the victim. The abusers are often as physically imposing as adults, and are just as sadistic and cruel as any adult can be.

eraser8

So no matter what was said or done to this kid he was just being hyerpsensitive? So if someone comes and spraypaints your car overnight, you're just being oversensitive if you call the cops. As for the lawsuit, there's certain precedents in place spelling out the responsibility of schools, so given the existance of tose, one can be pretty well certain there was a bit more going on than the occasional name calling.

So, wait, ColombianDrugLord, if someone looks odd, then they deserve torment, especially if they look 'teh queer'. They deserve to be made fun of, and if they can't pull their balls together enough to slaughter their tormentors (Exaggeration is obvious here), they deserve to be made fun of more.

I wasn't aware that high school was a constant test of Darwinian 'Survival of the Fittest'. I was under the impression, in fact, that due to a social contract with schools signing over a HEAVY amount of responsibility to kids during the time that they are in school, there is a an obligation due to the nature of their jobs to, well, farking do their jobs. That is prevent harassment, bullying, etc, beyond perhaps bitterly teaching a history class.

So, we have all these rules and laws about defending the rights of people, especially people under 18. I don't believe hyper-politically-correct 'Everyone should feel good', but I do believe that school's have an obligation to stop harassment and the like.

Apparently, you believe that unless the kid can stop it themselves, they deserve no protection from the school, until they can, as aforementioned, slaughter their tormentors.

I thought schools had anti-bullying rules for many reasons, many of which became more important after torment played as a high factor into school shootings which has many people across america in a paranoia lock. But they should be disregarded, cuz, 'hey, the kid deserves it, the whiner/fag'.

And, apparently, anyone who disagrees with you is a fatty or a whiner, or both.

How much of that did I get correct? I'm not making any claims to perfect paraphrasing or psychological inferences, but I think I did decently.

Dinty Moore's Law wins the thread.

feistyALgal: OK, define harassment. What if due to my religion's code of ethics, I am seriously offended anytime someone says the word "it"?

I have mixed feelings about this. I was the subject of intense bullying in jr. high and the first half of high school. I was called every name in the book, I was assaulted in the halls and on a one occasion beat up pretty bad after school. I was thrown into dumpsters. I went months with bruises on my arms from bullies socking me. I remember with great clarity dreading going to school, dreading having to walk past certain lockers in the hallway. I once made the mistake of telling the gym teacher about the bullies and how they would hit me. He laughed at me and called me a sissyboy. I would spend all my free time in the library not because I was a bookworm, but because I was hiding. There was intense shame and self loathing, and I dreamt of being anywhere but at my town or at my school. The teachers and administrators in the school didn't care about me, my parents were too busy to notice, and I was too ashamed of being the subject of ridicule and not fighting to tell them. It was, without a doubt, a living hell.

And then in my Jr. year of high school things gradually changed. I made friends. As I started to hang out with larger groups of people, the bullies left me alone. I started attending school activities with frequency, and even had a pretty good date to the Jr. prom. By my senior year, I was the shiat. I had a hot car, I was in some circles a BMOC, and had lots of good friends (whom I'm still close with to this day, some 13 years later). While the girl I dated wasn't elected homecoming queen, she was the first runner up. To this day, I still consider my senior year in high school to be the best year of my life (which, now that Im about to turn 31, is kind of sad, but I try not to think about that too much).

The point is, things can change. No matter how miserable things seem, there's always the chance they'll get better. I haven't really thought about the bad years too much, and while now I can remember the names and the faces of my tormentors, I hold no bitterness and no animosity towards them. That one kid who beat me up so bad in the 8th grade that I had to go to the emergency room... I still remember his name, and really, I hope he's doing well. Kids do stupid things when their young and they can always change.

Do you fools know how hard it is to keep verbal bullying from happening? The school can't very well have someone follow the kid around waiting for something to happen.

If he comes in and tells the principals that he was called gay there still is not much they can legally do. They can bring in the bully and ask him about it but if he denies it... nothing can be done. Without an adult witness, it is just one word against another. The victim can be evil, too, and lie and make up things that never happened just to get someone they don't like in trouble.

If they do punish the bully on the other kid's word... here comes another type of lawsuit.

It is entirely different with physical bullying.


By the way, THE SUIT claimed that nothing was done. It was not proven. You know how the claims of lawsuits are. So cargrrl82, and others of the same thought, get your head out of your ass and think realistically.

eraser8

Before using the word psychosis, please learn what the fark psychosis actually is. Unless you think it's perfectly ok for people to taunt others and be allowed to do so no matter what or how bad it gets.

what a crybaby homo.

thetrenchcoat:
I just don't see why bullies are going to care if the school loses money or not. Enact all the anti-bullying rules you want it won't stop it.

What's to stop people randomly setting fires in the hallway or other extreme behaviour?

There are rules in place with consequences, serious enough to make people think twice. They are enforced without pity. Anyone who ignores them enough times is expelled.

Assault in the schools just exists in a social gray zone right now. Change the rules, enforce them regularly, and see if things don't change.

chknjetski

If a kid comes in repeatedly saying the same people are doing something to them, it's a pretty safe bet something is going on. And if the kid reports what's happening is escalating? Then the school better damn well do something. And if there's even a whiff of anything physical, the school better get involved. As one of my grade school teachers once pointed out, teachers do know what goes on in the halls. The good ones don't just let it go.

Bullies should all be killed to cull their bad genetics from the human race.

I am only 19 and i remember the days when someone called someone else gay; someone got their ass kicked (lots of times it would be bully getting his ass kicked by the gay or supposedly gay kid); and life goes on.