julietsierra
Posts: 1841
Joined: 9/26/2004 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth quote:
This whole thing is pretty sad really. Most high school students - boys and girls - at one point, whether in their neighborhoods, basements or school grounds, end up in at least one fight in their high school lives. Everything perceived hurt and insult is superficial to a teen . Things change - The PC police have already removed 'money bars', games of 'tag', and 'dodge-ball' in many locals. Parents have welcomed the nanny state and abdicated all responsibility to the state, in this case represented by the school. Sure, fights still happen, but with this result? http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070919/480/7b4a6f668d1d457bb9a96cc57fc23abd With 6 beating and kicking one? Seems a bit more than a ripped shirt and skinned knee. But there has been no judgment only arrest and if I've read correctly, 25 years is not even on the table for any of the participants. But this is the US, so I'm sure the civil litigation attorneys are lining up. They may not spend 25 years in prison but they have a good chance of working 'life' to pay off the resulting civil suit judgment. lol...the PC police as you call them may have recognized that dodge ball is inherently discriminatory in the years following the passing of IDEA, wherein those of lesser physical and cognitive capabilities were mainstreamed into regular classrooms (including physical education) and found to be the regular targets of the participants on the other team, but I seriously doubt that the PC police can actually legislate development to the point where the reactions of a teen wouldn't still exist with all their feelings on the surface. In fact, I'm pretty sure the PC police as you call them can't regulate maturity, no matter how hard they try. In our school, we try all the time. We have a zero tolerance rule in place, social workers and counselors and time after time after time, we continue to deal with percieved insults and accusations and the anger and hurt that they cause. From time to time (5 times last year to be precise), we also deal with fights that involve two or more students jumping one student. The fact is, it's less a preconceived plan than it is a high school tendency of gathering friends together to be on "my side" verses "your side" and the resulting chaos that ensues when that happens. Last year, in an attempt to break up a fight between some girls, one of our teachers was hurt. Police were called. The girls were taken away until their parents could pick them up at the police station. They were expelled. Neither the girls' families, the teacher or the school pressed charges. It was a school fight. The girls found their way in to other schools and away from each other as well as away from our school. They have all since graduated and moved on in their lives. All are attending college. While in school, they had all been getting help but one thing led to another and quite like flash paper, what was talk became a fight that involved 5 girls jumping on one. And yes, the one girl's face looked much like that boy's face, including a torn ear where her earring was pulled out and a cut running down her face from her ear to her chin. The wounds looked horrible at the time. She healed and there were no scars. Showing me yet another photograph of the boy doesn't convince me in the least that what happened was any different than what I see in any given year. I've seen girls pull the weave right out of their opponents head and wave it around like it was a scalp. I've seen a boy and his friends jump someone that dared to call his friend - a girl, but with no relationship ties - a "ho." In each of those instances, no calculations were made on the part of the people doing the attacking regarding the ability to hit their opponent 5 times, not 6 because of some ridiculous idea that 6 times is the magic number or something like that. In fact, when I questioned the boy who led the jumping, because of the other boy's "ho" comments, he simply shrugged and said "he won't be insulting my friend again. Next time, he'll remember that just because she's smaller than he is, he will pay for what he says." In his world, there are consequences. When I reminded him he could have been arrested, his reaction was to shrug and say that at least he won't say that stuff about her again." Sometimes it's difficult for us to remember what life was like in our high school years. More often than not, we remember high school as being someplace calm and "golden." However, it wasn't like that back then and it isn't like that now. If the girls in my school had been charged for their school fight, they'd have lost their scholarships (yep, all were "good" students). They'd have been unable to go on to college and they'd have become yet some more underachievers. As it is, all the girls involved, from what I hear from their friends, are doing well and have plans for their futures that don't involve jumping others. More often than not, what happened to them in high school, while definitely not appropriate, and even more definitely, violent, was simply a high school thing and they've grown up and out of that tendency to fight at the drop of a hat. We'll never know with Mychal Bell now, will we? Nearly a year in prison, his scholarship gone, and his future in shambles... yes, of course he should have made better choices. But so should the adults involved in this case. They were the adults for goodness sake. The bottom line was not that the kid sat under the tree. It was not that the kid that was beat up threw insults around. It was that the adults in this case just could NOT stand the idea of the minority culture in that small town being so "uppity" as to presume equality with his white peers and by god, that had to be stopped. Mychal Bell was made an example of. And just like the people in authority who used to warn the black community whenever "the boys" were up in arms verses doing anything to stop them as they found someone to lynch as an example to others, these adults could have done a darn better job than they did. Mychal Bell and his cohorts may have jumped someone. That boy had some injuries to his face. None of those injuries were so debilitating that he couldn't attend a party that same evening. This was a school fight that was blown out of proportion and what the hell if some black kids' lives were ruined in the process. juliet
< Message edited by julietsierra -- 9/21/2007 5:02:19 PM >
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