No Bullying Policies and Protecting the rights of "different" students

Parent Cafe
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<p>I never heard that before, but it’s great! It’s in the same spirit as, “The best revenge is success.” Don’t let your rivals drag you down; just go about your business, and in time it will become clear who is on top. I imagine the football fans at Duke, Vanderbilt, and Stanford have adopted a similar attitude. (Maybe Notre Dame should consider doing so as well.)</p>

<p>I saw a Northwestern brochure last year with a photo of a bunch of students at a football game with big, happy, goofy smiles and a hand-lettered sign reading, “Beat them with your brains!” I found it very endearing.</p>

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<p>^ ^Agreed…But what’s with the gratuitous reference to Notre Dame?^^</p>

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<p>[Calif</a>. teen faces 21 years after guilty plea - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/calif-teen-faces-21-years-guilty-plea-084443622.html]Calif”>http://news.yahoo.com/calif-teen-faces-21-years-guilty-plea-084443622.html)</p>

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<p>More at link.</p>

<p>What the story omits is how McInerney committed his crime: he walked into the classroom where Lawrence King was sitting, walked over to him, and shot him in the back of the head. It was an execution.</p>

<p>It’s about time this came to an end. The mistrial the first time was extremely upsetting. And anyone who doesn’t believe it had a great deal to do with the defense attorney’s shameless use of the “gay/trans panic” defense, effectively putting the blame on the victim, is naive. It worked in the first Gwen Araujo murder trial, and it worked here. At least temporarily.</p>

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<p>DonnaL…It would seem to me the school itself should share some of the blame in this tragic situation:</p>

<p><a href=“http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?m=b&a=rp&id=1215537&postId=1215537&postUserId=7&sessionToken=&catId=6978&curAbsIndex=0&resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%26DQ%3DsectionId%253A6978%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D3[/url]”>http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?m=b&a=rp&id=1215537&postId=1215537&postUserId=7&sessionToken=&catId=6978&curAbsIndex=0&resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%26DQ%3DsectionId%253A6978%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D3&lt;/a&gt;

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<p>I couldn’t possibly disagree more. This is just more victim-blaming, in my opinion, and is exactly what the defense tried to do. God forbid he should have been supported in his gender expression (there’s reason to believe he was transgender), or that he defied the constant bullying by fighting back the only way he knew how. The only people whose “behavior” should have been contained and controlled were those who were tormenting him on a regular basis, including the boy who killed him. I can excuse his parents for lashing out like this (even though they made a number of homophobic/transphobic comments themselves and weren’t exactly supportive of their son while he was alive), but it’s hard to excuse anyone else.</p>

<p>And before the usual suspects chime in – yes, I have an “agenda” on issues like this, and I’m proud of it.</p>

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<p>I have to wonder about a mother who blames the school for not keeping her kid in line when she can’t!! </p>

<p>I think the young man was let down by his family and his school. That is sad. </p>

<p>But I have a comment: Is this the case where the young man was relentlessly hitting on other young men, who did not welcome his advances? If so, the adults in the situation did screw up. Unwelcome sexual advances — whether boy-girl, girl-boy, boy-boy, or girl-girl — are unacceptable. It is the responsibility of adults to teach ALL young people to respect each other. CERTAINLY, I do NOT condone the murder, and the circumstances don’t make it any less horrendous. I just want to point out that the situation prior to the shooting seems to have been mishandled.</p>

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<p>How do you know those hot males are heterosexual? Maybe the gay guy knows something you don’t.</p>

<p>Or maybe the other guys are hetero. But both gay and straight men need to learn how to politely turn down unwanted advances, and how to take no for an answer.</p>

<p>I’m always amazed by a straight men who maintains that he is entitled to assault a gay man who offers him any romantic/sexual overture, however mild. Yet he’d be outraged if he asked a woman out and she hit him with a brick. I can’t see how the two situations are at all different.</p>

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<p>I don’t like trying any 14-year-old as an adult. And I really don’t like keeping him in jail for years until he looks like an adult, and then threatening to try him as an adult for what he did as a child. I feel this way no matter what the crime was.</p>

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<p>kelsom, portraying the victim as having “sexually harassed” his murderer was one of the reprehensible tactics by defense counsel; it obviously seems to have worked to a certain extent if that’s how people remember the case (even apart from the mistrial). From everything I read, it simply wasn’t true: as I said before, he started at some point to respond to the bullying by fighting back with words and a sharp tongue. Someone calls him a “f*g,” he responds with “you know you want me,” or blowing a kiss. (My son has told me that when he was in high school, he tried to fight back with words himself when people called him names like that.) Obviously, Larry King had no idea that this kid would not only be embarrassed in front of his friends, but would shoot him in the back of the head. Which for all anyone knows he might have done anyway. If Larry had known what would happen, would he have responded in the same way? I’m sure the answer is no. But that doesn’t make it sexual harassment.</p>

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<p>Hunt, I don’t usually like it either. But sometimes – including in this case – it’s very difficult for me to muster any sympathy or favor any leniency whatsoever for someone who did what McInerney did, whether he was 14, 16, or 26.</p>

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I can understand that–but for just about every case where a child is tried as an adult, there’s somebody who feels that way. That’s why I think it’s bad for this to be available as an option for anybody so young.</p>

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<p>I completely agree with this.</p>

<p>I don’t like the death penalty, though there have been times when I “understood” someone’s desire for it. And, i don’t think, knowing what we know about teenage brain development that we can ethically try a someone as an adult for a crime they committed at 14. </p>

<p>It’s an awful crime, to be sure. But, justice is supposed to be blind.</p>

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<p>At my D school the gay guy is friends with the most popular girls, thus insulated to a degree from.taunts by the jocks and others. If D’s gay friend used the girls bathroom it is probably because the girls wanted him to…but! I doubt he does. If the gay boy you speak of is queer or transgendered then accomodations need to be made sp he can use a coed restroom or the girls…depending upon what gender he most closely identifies with.</p>

<p>I sense an irritation In your voice. As if you are upset this gay boy receives special privileges. He doesn’t. He deserves to be protected just like everyone else. If he hits on other kids and they can’t deal with it oh well. Kids flirt with each other all the time. Unless he starts sexually harrassing or groping, then people need to get over it.</p>