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Moving away from the thread on Seduction and the Ages...my comments on this subject did not belong there.
This bullying episode speaks to the level of incompetence found in those who are hired to protect and nurture children.
http://www.kens5.com/news/national/Dad-goes-into-tirade-after-bus-bullies-target-disabled-daughter-103168809.html
I don't think any parent would react differently considering the school had not responded to these events. I am personally familiar with the subject and thus my strong reaction to same.
I pulled my 12 year old nephew out of public school because of the bullying he received on the school bus. You must know at the outset that he was one of four white kids on the bus in a sea of black faces. To me the bullying was radcially motivated and yet all I saw were his tears and the desire to stay out of school.
To harass a white kid for his race, a gay kid for his sexual identity or a handicapped child because they cannot fight back is criminal. But the real crime is that if such activity prevents a child from receiving an education then I see red and want someone to get locked up for the crime.
I started off much like the father whose daughter was bullied, I went to the school authorities and informed them of the situation. I was told that they would look into it, and nothing happened. I pulled my nephew off the bus and drove him to school for a week hoping to allow tensions to cool down. But the following week he was back on the bus and returned home with blood on his shirt from the damage to his nose.
My next visit to the school was less than pleasing to the vice-principal who I accosted in front of his office staff just so there would be witnesses. I made it quite clear that I was going to obtain the names of the bullies and have them arrested for assault, and since he was aware of the crimes I was naming him as an accomplice. I said he could expect the police to arrive the following day. He threated to have me arrested for tresspassing, I told him to go right ahead, I was taking my nephew out of the school.
The school resource officer (a uniformed policeman) refused to arrest me and instead escorted me out to the parking lot so I could leave. He told me that many parents at the school were unhappy with this vice-principal and that the school had a major discipline problem. I told him I would be back to get my nephew's school records.
I placed the boy in a private charter school, an inner city school with a 90% black student body. I did it for two reasons. One, I was on the school advisory board there, a place I had volunteered for three years. Second, I did not want the boy to feel prejudiced against black people.
Today the boy is a yong man of twenty and his three closest friends are black because they all graduated from that school together. It isn't the race it's the attitude. That charter school stood up for education and no nonsense. A friend of my nephew is graduating from the University of Virgina next year, she has a 4.3 grade point average, that equates to an A plus plus. She is black and proves that race has nothing to do with intelligence. Any student can excell if they have the proper guidance.
As for that vice-princpal, he made the error of running for the school board in the county and the parents of all those he had ignored at the middle school blew his chance right out the window. I was fortunate enough to sit by and watch it happen, it was quite an education.
I'm sorry for the length of my discourse. There are laws on the books for assault and harassment, they are little enforced in the school system. My nephew is gay. I did not allow that to become part of the argument when he was younger, even though I was aware of his early feelings. He didn't need to see it as part of the problem. He finally came out at age 18 and made me proud. Some lessons in life do end well.
Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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The real question is not whether the law is on the statute books, but how one can force the process of the law to be started.
Making an arrest, even charging a person with an alleged offence, that is only the start. There has to be a chain of evidence linking the alleged offender with the crime. WIthout that any prosecution must fail. And, if you consider this unemotionally, it is right that it fails. Emotionally we want all offenders punished. Intellectually we would rather a couple escape justice than an innocent person be convicted, especially if we are that innocent person.
In the UK the Crown Prosecution Service (In Scotland I think it is The Procurator Fiscal) makes a judgment on whether there is sufficient evidence on which to base a prosecution, and also determines whether it is in the public interest to prosecute. Justice must be seen to be done.
The whole chain of events starts with having sufficient evidence against the alleged offender. That Fred knew about something may be obvious, but, unless one can prove that Fred knew, there is no hope of prosecuting Fred successfully for knowing and not reporting it.
What needs to happen is that the law officers must be persuaded that there is something worthy of their attention. Only then will they gather evidence. Well, unless it is the child of a police officer being bullied, of course.
I would submit that, whatever the law states, turning up at the police station to lodge a complaint "Jimmy is being bullied at school" is not going to be the start of a successful meeting. Unfortunately Jimmy has to present himself to the police with a broken nose and torn clothing before action can be taken.
It can, however, be a civil matter. But pursuing that requires a substantial depth of wallet. One must be able to afford to lose.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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How very true, Timmy. And to Hermes I want to say, it isn't guts, its a sense of fair play. For our children and the children of others there needs to be a level playing field. Society is harsh enough, we don't need to let these kids learn to hate one another. In many cases I think that just being in charge of a situation makes it criminal if nothing is done.
Having a complaint lodged about a particular group of individuals performing the act of bullying on a school bus did nothing to instigate further investigation. Closer observation of these boys and their activity could have brought their crime to light. The addition of a monitor on the bus would have helped. Now they have begun placing cameras on school buses, that would have provided some evidence of wrong doing.
In this case I also felt the issue was black and white. The vice-principal was black and I was a white man telling him he was doing an inadequate job. I saw a lack of competence, or maybe it was compassion, in the man, he saw me as a threat to his race. This was not speculation on my part, by then I was quite familiar with the racial theme.
Having been at that inner city school since its inception I understood the edge racial differences caused. Many wondered why I was there from the start. Except for one teacher all others on the staff were black. And when the advisory committee first met I was the only white face in the room.
But the principal and founder of the school was an intelligent man with a PhD and a larger view of life. I had met him through some of the court activity in which we were both involved and I was invited to join the advisors. I understood his dilemma, he needed a token white face to broaden the community aspect of the school.
So I advised and recruited student for the school, bringing in six white kids, two Asians and one Native American. The school was behind that "It takes a Village to raise a child" concept. The student population needed diversity. And so white, black, Asian and Indian learned about American culture together from all sides of the issue.
In the beginning there was a vice-principal there that didn't like me. (what is it with me and vice-princpals?) He was suspicious of all white people, but we got past that. He'd been raised to distrust whites, he was a Black Panther radical in the sixties. But I am a patient man and he eventually left the school because of his radical thinking.
Okay, one more story to make you understand my feelings about race. I have told this before so if any of you have heard this forgive me.
In late August of 1963 I was 14 years old and living in the suburbs of Washington DC. I attended a Quaker run private school where I received the education of a lifetime. Among my friends at school were several black students, one of whom was the son of a Baptist minister.
Jessie invited me and another white boy to attend a rally in DC that late August. I still get chills when I think back on the history I witnessed that day. Standing along the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial I heard Dr. Martin Luther King give his "I Have a Dream" speech.
I was the white face in a sea of black ones, although I was not alone in representing my race. All those years later I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, a place which had its own piece of history in American racisim.
When Dr. L approached me to be on that committee one of the first things he asked me was if I had any awareness of the struggle black people had faced as they grew up. He wanted the children of the school to have a better life, one free of the opression in his own childhood. And I was happy to tell him of that day in August when a 14 year old boy saw first hand the struggle and how the dedication of those hundreds of thousands made me feel.
[Updated on: Sat, 18 September 2010 19:22]
Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
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Bullying, the law and enforcement... 
