As Bill Quick says, the administrators at this Hercules high school seem a bit less concerned about the welfare of the student who was severely beaten in a four-on-one attack in the boys' bathroom than they are worried that a tape of the incident ended up "on the internet." The principal airily dismisses the incident itself, saying that there will always be fights, and zeroes in on the real cause for alarm: "the issue is the internet." It is in this spirit that the article describes the brutal beating, which left the kid with a cracked jaw, as "an ugly, but ordinary, one-sided fight."
There are, indeed, as the principal indicates, "no rules or laws to keep up with what goes on there [i.e., the internet]." Or as another adminstrator laments: on the internet "kids can do and say anything and there are no laws to stop them." Which is a shame: otherwise, these attackers and their videographer/accomplice would have gotten away with it the old fashioned way.
I have no doubts that "ordinary" is in fact accurate, but it's pretty weird that the school, as it seems, views that as a mitigating, rather than a damning, factor.
From my experience in school, the schools care less about what actually goes on in the school and more about anyone finding out about it. A few months before I graduated in 2001 I got hit by a teacher in front of a room full of other students. When I got taken to the office after defending myself and told them what happened, they quickly informed me that I was mistaken, a teacher would never hit a student. There was no tape of it, but the 50 other kids that saw it happened were pretty ticked that nothing was done about it. But, that's just one of many reasons why school sucks.
Posted by: Amy 80 at May 13, 2005 07:21 PMin the pic of you hugging the robot, it appears ur wearing a wedding ring...
Posted by: QuakerLT8 at May 13, 2005 10:13 PMAmy80 I think you absolutely have a point. My High School wasn't as bad as the school in the neighboring town in that regard, but both High Schools downplayed a lot of these "Incidents" Especially once the reporters came out. When I was a Sophmore 12 long years ago, there was a stabbing between two kids in the middle of a class, and the officials were more worried about possible lawsuits, than the welfare of the kid who got slashed to the bone. School does indeed suck.
Posted by: Rich at May 14, 2005 04:22 AM1. Four students beating up one is not a "fight".
2 It would be interesting to see how "usual" the Principal thought it would be if four large parents came in and beat him up
3- none of this justifies putting a video of a violent assault on an innocent person on the internet. Same as putting a video of a group of thugs raping a woman on the internet - it's not right.
I'm with Gwen: BANANAS!!!!
Posted by: Leslie at May 16, 2005 04:35 AMI think it should be mandatory to videotape all beatings and put them on the Internet.
Posted by: Wes at May 16, 2005 01:43 PMYep. The internet's a lawless place where anything can happen.
You know, I doubt an average school administrator would understand the irony even if there were videos of him/her failing to do his/her job on the internet.
Posted by: Swimmy at May 16, 2005 07:05 PM