Let kids defend themselves from school bullies

[bluestateguy]

Kids can't be suspended by brain-dead school administrators for defending themselves or a classmate from a bully.

I had a middle school friend who was suspended for physically defending himself from a bully (his father took the day off and took him to the pizza parlor and the arcade to play video games during his suspension day).

Anyway, it's all fine and good to demand that bullies be disciplined by the school. I'm for that. I'm also for holding accountable and demanding that administrators put bullying to a stop and take proactive measures. I'm for that too.

But when a kid is being physically assaulted by a bully, he has the right as a human being, to defend himself with his fists. And to defend others who are being assaulted. The boy in Huntington Beach threw a mere one punch to defend a blind classmate who was being violently attacked. And yet brain dead school administrators suspended the boy who intervened.

Sometimes a bloody nose is the best lesson a bully can get.

[Initech]

1. Zero tolerance policies are bullshit.

No one should be suspended or worse, arrested for defending themselves. The administrators get way too freaked out very easily anymore. I'm surprised that, at this point, no one has challenged zero tolerance in SCOTUS yet.

[TexasTowelie]

2. Only fists?

I know of a few people that might favor other weapons requiring less proximity.

[SheilaT]

3. My older son was bullied in grade school.

I didn't have any idea how bad it was, because he didn't tell me. It's important to add that he is mildly autistic, Asperger's Syndrome, and this was a good six years before he was diagnosed.

We wound up transferring him for an otherwise excellent (academically) public school, to an even better private (secular) school, where he wasn't bullied, but was valued for his smarts.

He's now applying to grad schools for a PhD program in astrophysics.

[hifiguy]

19. I'm dx'd Asperger's

I got bullied plenty in elementary school.

Unfortunately I didn't get the math gene so many on the spectrum get. If I had I'd have become an astronomer, cosmologist or theoretical physicist instead of going to law school, which itself worked out fine but I am hopelessly unsuited for a very social profession.

OTOH, being a little off center is not only welcome but practically required for high-level hard sciences. His wife had to remind Einstein fairly to not walk to his office at Princeton in sport jacket and pajama pants.

Best of luck to your son. He's going to have fun in grad school!

[SheilaT]

21. Oh, he is!

He's been doing research about galaxy evolution, but hopes to get into a program that is more planetary astrophysics.

What a shame you didn't get the math gene, but I'd guess you are probably incredibly good at doing legal research.

I knew a man, the father of a classmate, now long since deceased, who was incredibly smart, probably the smartest person I'll ever know. He was himself a physics person, even wrote a textbook, I believe. Anyway, they lived in northern New York State, and there were various stories about him calling home from work in the middle of the day in the middle of winter when the temperature had not risen above minus 20, to exclaim to his wife, "Trudy, someone stole my overcoat!"

"No, dear," she'd tell him, "you left it at home."

Now that I know more, I'm fairly certain he was on the spectrum.

[murielm99]

4. My son had a middle school friend who was given detention

for punching the kid who had been bullying him. He knocked the little shit down and gave him a bloody nose.

The principal had my son's friend sit there with some paperwork called "Orientation to Detention." The kid had to sign his name to the three or four pages, indicating that he had read them. Then, the principal shook his hand and sent him home.

For the next few days, all the teachers talked about was what a good detention that had been, how happy they were to see that detention.

It is a shame that the principal and the teachers were forced into enforcing a zero tolerance policy. They were aware of the bullying, but could not intervene. None of them had actually seen anything that could allow them to put a stop to it.

My son and this kid are now nearly thirty-four. I don't know if the schools here have changed any of this zero tolerance crap. I do know there is more of a focus on bullying and its prevention.

[Fumesucker]

5. I never set foot in school again after HS

For me all school meant was the misery of wondering how I was going to be bullied on any particular day.

I love learning but by the time I was twelve I utterly loathed school and despised teachers/administrators, where I went the bullies had special status and were protected, the victims were almost always the ones punished for any incident that become known to the officials.

Just the thought of being a student again sent me into a panic attack for at least a couple of decades.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. The retaliatory punch is usually the one that is witnessed - the one bystanders react to.

Once I learned that the sixth retaliatory punch isn't punished any more harshly than the first, I had fewer problems with bullies.

I figured we might as well have the next five fights *right now*.

YMMV

[Eleanors38]

6. I agree. This has less to do with policy and more to do with a Right.

A school, following an incident, should actually find out what happened and punish the instigator instead of protecting and enabling her or him. Bullies know the system, and have considerable power in a "Zero Tolerance" regime.

As always, remember: Zero Tolerance is another fine product from Uranus Corporation (a subsidiary of the WOD.)

[LostOne4Ever]

7. I think zero tolerance laws are bullshit

[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]But I am not going to go so far as to encourage violence going either way.[/font]

[Glassunion]

8. The kid was not suspended, nor was he kicked off the football team. That was a rumor.

Bad news reporting and all, rumors become news, and 80k+ people signed a petition for something that never happened in the first place.

So, a student was not suspended by brain-dead school administrators.

A bully gets a bloody nose (actually a cut to the side of the head), gets arrested and nothing happened to the boy that laid him out.

Always check your news sources, and even then take it with a grain of salt.

[Aerows]

9. On the last day of school

when I was in 7th grade, right near the end of the day, I busted the boy who had harassed me all year long in the mouth. He had a big, fat bloody lip, but the fact that it was a girl who had popped him one kept him quiet.

He was absolutely shocked when I decked him.

[Bad Thoughts]

13. Best story I read all day! eom.

[WestCoastLib]

10. Yes. Let's allow violence in certain circumstances...what could go wrong?

This is just silly. Kids (and adults) need to find means of breaking up fights other than punches to the face.

I'm sorry, but under what determination are you prepared to let school officials and/or legal authorities decide what is and isn't appropriate self-defense? Is it only if there is a cell-phone video evidence? And if so, how far prior to the punch must be recorded to ensure that there weren't additional instigation or inappropriate behavior before then?

Are we going to base it on the word of witnesses? Does nobody remember what being in high school/middle school was like? How easy it is to produce a large number of "witnesses" that are willing to support the popular kid/cool kid/their friend/etc? I can remember plenty of instances, way back before cell phones and the internet, in which kids would be "set up" to react, to provoke into a fight or to doing something that everyone knew would get them in trouble.

Now, you are setting up a scenario where, with the appropriate level of teenage/adolescent underhandedness, you can set up somebody, kick his/her ass in front of all your friends and proclaim you were protecting someone from a bully so you can walk away without punishment.

This is a ridiculous overreaction to a non-issue. Allowing it to be "OK" to punch kids under certain circumstances is only going to lead to trouble in so many ways. You can prevent bullying without resorting to punching someone and if you want to be a hero, you have to live with the consequences. That's a perfectly valid life lesson to learn. If you want to pat little Johnny on the back for sticking up for himself or others with a nod and wink, while he does his time at home, so be it, but he needs to take the punishment along with it.

[Frank Cannon]

12. I suspect you were never bullied.

Or at least, bullied to the extent that every day was a living, breathing hell for you.

The only thing that gets through to a bully is when the victim inflicts pain on them. Any show of determined physical resistance is good; a bloody nose is better. One way or another, the bully will either quit entirely or move on to easier targets.

I speak from experience on this. Zero tolerance rules are ridiculous. They lead only to Columbines and suicides. Better a kid walk away with a black eye and a new perspective on life than not walk away at all.

[WestCoastLib]

14. You suspect wrong

I speak with a lot of first hand knowledge here being victim and also being someone who has exacted "retribution" back in my youth.

You've also failed to address a single one of my questions.

What is the level of evidence that must be required to determine if a violent act is an act of protecting against a bully vs. an act of aggression? Who are you prepared to allow to make that determination and by what means?

Again, the idea that allowing kids to hit each other (in some circumstances) is going to prevent shootings and suicide is one of the most ludicrous thoughts I can imagine. This "system" of "sometimes it's ok to hit" would simply be abused and lead to even more trauma and trouble for those kids who are already feeling as though they are outcasts. There is not going to be a clear, easy to follow trail of youtube videos, detailing everything these kids have done to each other, and it's going to come down to witnesses or he said/she said. And in those situations, in school, the "victor" is almost always the most popular kid.

If your an outsider, a new kid, a troubled kid, poor kid, the wrong sexual orientation, the wrong race...too bad. The "witnesses" will gladly be telling the teachers that you are a bully and provoked the beating you took. This is how high school works.

[Frank Cannon]

22. I don't believe you.

I fought back, physically. He didn't even get a bloody nose, just embarrassed and a little bruised when I dumped him head first on the floor in front of everyone. His bullying stopped. His friends stopped, too. I never had a problem with any of them any more. I actually had fun in high school because I never had to worry about those shitheads ever again.

So, yeah, beating up the bully worked for me.

Now tell us your personal bullying success story, WestCoastLib. Please grant us the benefit of your wisdom.

[gratuitous]

15. You're right, but our culture doesn't allow for that sort of thinking

We live in the land of the High Church of Redemptive Violence. We believe in violence and its power to save any situation with a fervor and ferocity that snake handlers and faith healers can only envy. Violence has failed to produce positive results for so long and in so many different circumstances, you would think it would no longer be turned to as a solution. But that would be wrong.

Take our national blunders in Afghanistan and Iraq, as just two recent examples. We've been inflicting violence in those two countries in an impressive array of ways, and it has failed spectacularly. We've blown through a trillion dollars or more, lost thousands of our own military personnel and blown sky high any number of combatants, civilians, by-standers and others without any measurable gain in whatever our objective is in those two countries. We've spawned new even more vicious enemies whose exploits have horrified the globe.

But what have we learned? Not a thing. We have dozens of elected officials clamoring for another war, another invasion, another chance for violence to show what it can do. And those dozens of government officials are backed by millions of our fellow citizens, convinced that if we do it just right, this time it will work out just the way we think we want. Can we really expect any different from our children, who have grown up with this real-life exercise in might making right, officially endorsed at all the highest levels?

[bluestateguy]

16. Ok

So you would suspend or punish a boy who is being savagely beaten to a pulp by bullies and if he has the temerity to fight back, he shall be suspended, or given detention.

Got it.

[WestCoastLib]

17. It sounds like you would.

You just wouldn't suspend the attackers

[bluestateguy]

23. School bullies don't give a crap about being suspended or getting detention

They view at as a vacation from school.

[jwirr]

11. Our school has an anti-bullying program. I often wonder

how they teach this and if it is working.

[Township75]

18. Self defense is a right.

It should be universal.

[Snobblevitch]

24. My best friend in high school

(and now 30+ years later) was 5'6" and probably 120#. (We met in the third grade when his family moved next door). Anyway, he was getting bullied and I warned the guy to lay off or I was going to deck him. Well, he did not listen, he was pushing my friend around and I did knock him down. I was 6'3" and 200# The bully was heavier than me, but he didn't hassle anyone anymore after that. (I warned him about that too. Not only did I not get in trouble, the principal called me to his office and privately, thanked me but said I couldn't tell anyone. My dad took me and my friend out for burgers, just because. (That was the first of only two fights I was ever involved in.)

This zero tolerance shit is more about administrators CYA than it is about doing what is right for kids.