NEWS: Painting Targets For the ACLU on Your High School

CULTURE: Painting Targets For the ACLU on Your High School

Every two weeks or so, a principal (or school board or a district superintendent) wakes up one morning and says to itself, “I’m going to see if I can make the most stupid decision I can just to see if I can get away with it. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just be an asshole, walk over to the nearest kid, and pick a fight because I can.”

In one case of a principal being a fuckwad, a ninth-grade male student was suspended for wearing make-up. The school district refuses to comment.

One other case of douchebaggery comes from Queens where a racist assistant principal was reassigned because she singled out 13 Haitian students during a lunchroom fight, made them sit on the floor, and made them eat their lunch with their hands.

There are many wonderful teachers in this world. But fuck administrators.

Horrid.

Those who can't teach administrate.

painful

it's far more disturbing he's REPEATING his second year.

Not really. I mean, he really looks like a marginalised dumbass. I bet he makes his friends call him "Lord Midnight" or something. If he has any.

The law says administrators can curtail student's speech if they are disturbing the learning environment. I don't agree with it, but that's what it is.

That racist asst. principal is obviously a fuck up though.

In case anyone is wondering, as I was, why the principal should be fired, the answer is here:

In case anyone is wondering, as I was, why the principal should be fired, the answer is here:

hmmm.... sorry, IE froze and when I hit refresh it seemed to double post.

So the question is, do the prayer-in-school groups get behind this kid?

it gets worse...in the school wear my wife teaches, middle school boys were sent to tribunal, and in some cases suspended, for wearing Levi Icon jeans because they are cut "too much like girls jeans."

the sole goth girl at that school ended up transferring because the administration called her a disruption due to the way she dressed, even though she was an "A" student.

public education really sucks sometimes.

I dunno. I don't feel particularly bad for the first kid, since he could just take the bloody makeup off. It's not exactly right, but I would side with the school if his makeup was causing disruptions amongst the students. Sure, yeah, free country, all that, but when it comes to public education you have to make compromises. Of course, it may have been that they just suspended him because they didn't like the makeup. But I'd say a guy walking around like that in my high school would've gotten mocked to the ends of the earth, quite possibly to the point where it'd be a problem in class.

Shit, that's nothing. When I was in the 9th grade, I was suspended for the following: having an earring. wearing ripped jeans. wearing a metallica t-shirt. wearing a megadeth t-shirt.

And then I didn't get suspended for wearing a Malcolm X cap to school, but I did get spit on in the hallways. Spit on. And when I told the administration about it, they were like, "Well, what did you expect?"

If you stick out, they will attempt to beat you back in.

Then the problem lies with the other students, not with him.

Granted, but so what? I'm not saying they should just let the other students off the hook. But if they have a dress code, which most schools around here do, then they're only really guilty of not enforcing it earlier. And if he's getting beaten up, then that actually could conceivably be a legal problem for them if he got seriously hurt. I'm not saying that it's right that the action they ultimately take winds up being against him, but students don't have all the rights that adults do, and I see nothing wrong with that. If people dress or act in a way that causes a disruption, schools absolutely should be able to put their foot down and tell the person that they can do whatever they want on their own time, but when they're in school, they will dress by the school's standards.

All of this is in theory, since they aren't disclosing details. It could just be because they don't like the make-up and they have nothing in the dress code covering it. In which case, yeah, that's wrong.

I still disagree. You are still faulting him for "causing a disruption" when he just looks a little different. It could just as easily be said that the closed-mindedness of the students who, for some remarkable reason, can't help but be disrupted by him is actually at fault for the disruption. The school, in punishing him, is simply taking the easy way out and attacking one student, instead of addressing a far greater problem.


That being said, he does look like a dumbass, and as far as I know, Wicca doesn't require wearing foolish makeup, but I still fail to see how his appearance is actually stopping students who really want to learn from doing so. My guess is that the students who are actually doing the disrupting would find some other source of non-educational amusement and disruption in the absence of this particular guy.

Those who can't teach, teach P.E.those who can't teach P.E. coach football, those who can't coach football administrate.

I participated in the Duval County public school system as a student... I hated the way the bureaucracy stifled the least thing from getting done to educate the children, I hated even more that the children stifled those attempts even more. So I left and finished high-school at the community college, and now attend college classes there. As part of my degree in internetworking I'm interning with a computer maintenance contracting company and their only client is the school board. So every day I drive around town seeing different facets of the school system from a new, adult perspective. It's SO much worse than I thought. I've watched the school board bicker on TV about how they're going to meet the federal quotas so they can't be accused of segregation, yesterday I had to repair a laptop while I listened to a teacher gossip with students about how gay couples among the students shouldn't be open and that god would "do what he did with soddom and gemhorra", I see them piss thousands of dollars away on computer equipment they don't know how to use and don't TRAIN anyone to use every day while one of my instructor's from the cisco academy is told to teach a class in internetworking to students in a room with no computers, no router, and no BOOKS. I routinely visit underfunded, black-only schools where the job of the teachers and administration is crowd control, they hardly give a second thought to education, the school books are decades old, and the climate control doesn't work. I can NOT come to terms with the fact that the school board allows this to happen while I deliver DOZENS of $800 desktops to these places simply because a portion of thier budget is slated for "technology". More often than not they end up collecting dust while the children are still sitting in hot rooms with old books not learning anything. I know this is a bit of a rant but it's something that has ALWAYS deeply disturbed me. I can't begin to tell you the atrocities... several schools have piles of old english literature books filed in a storage room under a banner proclaiming them "gramer" books, and I've met many an english teacher whose "gramer" was sub-par, and by sub-par I mean they use southern or ebonic slurs and coloquialisms that make it hard for me to understand them unless they are teaching english. I HATE this town. I fear SO much for the futures of the hundereds of thousands of children in this school district, but I can rest easy knowing that each day I enable a few more of them to google "boobies".

Wicca has what to do with makeup now?

Back when I was in good ol' Farmville Central HS I happened to be in the office and the Principal, Dr Nelson, happened to read my shirt, no doubt excited about what the child he had known since teaching him kindergarten PE was creatively displaying on his shirt. Unfortunately that day I was wearing a Clockwork Orange T-shirt and as he read and came to the word rape his face darkened and he told me I would have to change shirts. I asked a friend for an extra shirt and complied.

Now I could have, as my friend Jeff Martin suggested, fought this constricture of my 1st amendment rights. But as Rommel said, "Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning." I had nothing to gain by contesting it and much to lose. I don't think this kid has much to lose.

btw check out that stubble. He should cut out the makeup and grow a beard. That would be cool

I'd like to say that's it's more than a bit unfair to generalize all administrators as douchebags, as some people posting seem content to do. Administation is tough. Essentially, they exist to play the bad guy; get students in trouble. There are a multitude of wonderful administrators out there. It is a difficult, praiseless job with no clear rules. They walk a fine line. Unfortunately, just like in all professions, you get some who aren't very good at it; they're out of touch, discriminatory, or tight-assed. We have some wonderful administators at the school where I work: no bigots, and they let kids be themselves. The ones in these stories are...well, bad. Singling kids out and humiliating them based on personal prejudice...duh, get them out of there. Now suspending a kid for wearing makeup...not really deplorable, but certainly an overreaction. We have some boys who wear makeup (granted, a little more tastefully than that kid) and it's no big deal. They are no more distracting than the kids who wear the shirts as long as dresses with the giant chains and old teeth, or the girls with half their vaginas hanging out of their tiny clothing. High school is about looking as stupid as is humanly possible. It's like the whole point. But let's not pigeon-hole all administrators, please.


[Edited on Apr 16, 2005 by mamet]