Zero tolerance and bullies are in league with the ignorant

One thing about the internet, it brings awareness to small incidents that become big things. Sometimes an unintended consequence is the root cause of the awareness and the rage that people feel when the small incident happens. Then the cycle repeats itself. When I went to sleep last night the story was relatively feel-good. A bully was picking on a blind student at Huntington Beach High School. Said bully got his comeuppance when an equally sized youth came up from behind him and smacked him to the ground.

I wake up and the school has suspended the youth who defended the blind student and kicked him off of the football team.

The police arrested the bully and released him back to his parents.

As an adult, there are so many things wrong with this story.

Why were three of the bully’s friends behind him, simply watching the blind student be taunted and hit?

That discussion is one for the high school breakfast club to figure out. The social strata hasn’t changed since I was in high school. When you’re older, the geeks will be your boss, the popular kids will have middle management jobs, the jocks will do that or pharmaceutical sales and everyone else will be the sand that fills in the hour glass of society. Except for the bullies; they’ll be in prison or possibly that really annoying sales person who relies on gimmicks rather than relationships or intelligence.

A large portion of my anger and frustration is aimed squarely at the Huntington Beach High School, their principal or school board for following the connect-the dots mentality of zero tolerance of no violence. Had the incident taken place on a bus I could understand the punishment that was mete out.

However, in this case there is a clear and present danger to a blind student who was being attacked by another. Cody Pine, the student who broke up the fight and beat the bully stopped something that could’ve otherwise been much worse for someone else. But it was done using violence, which violated the no violence policy.

Many years ago in Georgia was the infamous tweety bird suspension. A child had a wallet with a chain that was beyond the district’s allowed regulation. The youth was suspended for 10 days.

A couple years ago in Georgia dozens of teachers changed the grades to hundreds of students so that their schools would show massive improvements. The supervisors got bonuses, the teachers were happy and the students weren’t learning. When the teachers got caught they didn’t lose their jobs, rather they fought it in court.

Where is the zero tolerance in that situation?

Surely the Huntington Beach High School authorities saw the video. It was covered in their local news, the video went viral and the story has received international attention.  And then they double down on their stupidity and suspend the student who did the right thing.

I wouldn’t say that he’s a hero. He just did the right thing. In a perfect world any student passing that situation would’ve done something to stop it, but they didn’t. This kid, Cody Pine did. That is what I want my kids to be like. Granted they might be the geek, a little bit of the jock, popular kid or average student, but I’d be beaming like a lantern with pride if they did something like this.

Zero tolerance policies are crap.

In this case, it’s a shield that protects boards or schools from making decisions that could offend or hurt a parent’s feelings. “It’s the policy” is all they have to say.

Again, in my perfect world, the school board would’ve met with the parents of the bully and kicked him out of school. When the parents started to complain, the school board would have the mettle to stand up and say ‘because he was punching a blind student, surely you’re not defending someone who is attacking the defenseless, would you?’

Parents who defend their idiot children bring me to another level of frustration. “He is such a nice kid”, “that is not the girl that I know” or other catch phrases are oft used when a child is either found guilty or caught red-handed doing something illegal or violent. That’s probably the script that his parents will use when they come to Oprah’s couch to ask for understanding about their son who would dare punch a blind person.

So much rage in this story. Such stupidity in the teens who were doing the bullying. I can only hope that the stupidity and callous thinking was a result of their own creation and that it was filtered down from their parents.