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.
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.
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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!”