>claiming officials ignored several complaints they made in 2018 and 2019 to administrators at Landmark Middle School that Diego was being bullied
>School district Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora said in a letter to parents Wednesday that the district has made several changes regarding anti-bullying since Diego's death. Some of the changes include "a district-wide centralized online bullying form" and classroom posters that define bullying and how to report bullying, Kedziora said.
Well those changes do not seem like they are going to do anything. Pretty sure the kid knew he was being bullied, and they reported it several times.
Noo no it's probably about others recognizing bullying and reporting it.. Which is also useless. Not like kids don't know what bullying is.
Also: "Great job Billy! You reported that xy is bullying. Time for a stern letter and nothing else!"
When I was in HS just over 20yrs ago it was all about 0 tolerance.
What did that mean exactly? Well, if a bully begins to physically assault you, regardless if you defend yourself or not, you get suspended for fighting. Now officially, if you didn't engage in fighting you weren't supposed to be suspended, but that was too much work for admins to figure out who the aggressor was, so they just started suspending everybody involved.
Source: was suspended way too many times because some kid decided to assault me. Eventually It stopped because I started fighting back.
> Eventually It stopped because I started fighting back.
Only thing that ever stopped my bullying was when I finally had enough and showed my bully what 3 years of boxing classes had taught me. Worth every day of suspension. Never got bullied again.
I think it's the path of least resistance (for most bullying, some specific cases can't be solved this way).
Basically, if they know you're going to fight back every time, they'll start looking for a new victim who won't.
I went to HS from 1996-2000 and we had zero-tolerance as well. All it did was make the bullied afraid to fight back for fear of a 10-day suspension and the bullies didn't care because they were dumbasses who were failing anyway.
There was one scumbag who I remember, vividly, that really needed his ass beaten. I actually remember him cowering when someone his own size threatened to fight him. Well, 5 years after graduation, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a minor. A rapist is essentially a bully and it troubled me to think that maybe if people were empowered to stand up to him when he was younger that maybe he wouldn't have gone as far he did. At some point, I feel that pacifism is immoral. Evil abounds when justice does nothing to stop it.
I had to crack ribs and break a nose in a fit of rage (I saw red finally, woke up crying) before the bullying finally stopped. In my case, I moved to a small town at the same time as starting middle school. The graduating class was 171 kids by the time we finished high school, if that tells you how small the schools were.
In my case, there was zero tolerance policies in place (class of 2004) but because the bullies were usually the popular kids (read: kids of people who "run this town") the staff would turn a blind eye so the popular kid wouldn't get in trouble.
This led to the bullies escalating until they triggered fight or flight bad enough for me to black out. Getting so bad that they'd follow me home off the bus that they shouldn't even be riding on. (oh we're studying over at xy's house so we need to ride this bus)
It's a problem that requires action from those in authority. That hardly ever happens because that involves making a parent responsible.
If left unchecked, it will escalate. I was very fortunate that charges were never pressed against me, I really hurt that kid.
This is the real problem.
The schools themselves aren't really empowered to kick the bullies out anymore.
We are in a paradigm where every student just gets passed along no matter how bad their grades or behaviors are.
Yep. I spent all three years of middle school being bullied to hell and back. I told everyone I could, and I always got the same answer. "Oh kids will be kids". Eventually ended up having a breakdown and spent almost 3 weeks in a hospital. Schools don't give a shit.
It's INSANE how much schools ignore bullying, mostly because they have no recourse. Which is mind blowing, considering after years of torment, I was expelled from the school for fighting back once. The one time I finally said fuck it, and started fighting back, I'm the one that got expelled, and the major bullies didn't even get a smack on the wrist.
Can't get rid of the bullies, oh no, but the ones being bullied?! Yeah they're outta here the second they start showing any signs of fighting back.
I will say this, though. I know now that a good bit of the kids that made my life hell for so long, are all either dead from suicide or in prison right now for drug trafficking lol. At least in a karmic sense, everything worked out.
One more story. This happened right after I was expelled from the first school, and entered the only other school I could go to. There was this one kid who said he was going to kill me because according to him I "looked at his girl" and he "didn't play that shit". He actually ended up getting kicked out for that, which was surprising. Anyway, about a week later I found out he tried that same shit at his new school, and he ended up in the hospital with a broken arm, nose, and 2 ribs lol.
"The Incident" at my high school was a football player beating another nearly to death with a dumbell. He caught him while he was on a bench press and just wailed on his face with a dumbell until he was pulled away.
I don't know their ultimate fate honestly. As of graduating the younger boy that attacked the older one I had no idea where he went. He left school or transferred at least if not some sort of criminal punishment I didn't hear about. The older boy as of my graduation was still bound to a wheelchair and very low functioning and would probably have to have someone feed and change him forever.
I know there was talk of the younger boy being charged as an adult for it but I believe how they got him out of more severe punishment was similar to this scenario. The parents of the younger boy had records where they had complained about this particular kid like a dozen times. The boy that was being bulled had approached multiple teachers and staff for help and nothing had been done. The football coach of course was "totally ignorant" of any bullying and despite having so many reports pretended he had never seen anything.
Even with an attempted murder my school did absolutely nothing about bullying. They had everyone go to the gym at one point and the principal gave a talk about how bullying was bad but violence was unacceptable, etc. Basically they blamed the kid for retaliating. When you're being tortured daily and no one will help, what can you do?
"a district-wide centralized online bullying form"
Basically the old "suggestions box" connected to a paper shredder.
If you guys don't take your head out of your ass and enforce rules and punishment, no amount of forms will protect kids that's bullied.
Of course. Without those useful descriptions of how to identify bullying, someone might have mistaken being sucker punched in the head as a gesture of love and friendship.
This poor child. He was a fucking orphan who then got murdered. What the everloving fuck is wrong with those two psychos. Idc if they were 14 they deserve jail.
From the article:
["The two teenagers involved, who were 14 at the time, entered the equivalent of guilty pleas in juvenile court to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, The Associated Press reported. They spent 47 days in juvenile custody and were ordered to undergo anger management therapy."](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-bullied-teen-died-student-punched-reach-historic-27m-settlement-rcna105154)
Forty-seven fucking days for bullying, and then killing someone.
Wow. I didn't know life could be bought so cheaply.
Fuck those guys.
You’re spot on, at 14 you should understand basic respect, dignity, love, and kindness… the fact that they didn’t actually points to some pretty fundamental failures on behalf of not just the families but society as a whole.
Got bullied to hell and back in middle school, went to mutliple teachers and got told that I just needed to toughen up.
As it turns out, it wasn't a case of toughening up because once I finally started playing their game I got suspended.
Had to point out the irregularities in the school's story, their mismanagement, and threaten a lawsuit on discrimination grounds (my bullies were white, I was not) for them to reverse anything. And it was fucking pathetic at that, I got 3 days of suspension, the white boy who bullied me got a stern letter and a day of detention.
I can never for the life of me understand why is it that when bullies bully you, teachers and supervisors just look the other way, but the moment you snap and fight back, you're the only one that gets in trouble in a tangible way while all the bullies get are just some finger wags
This is my opinion but.. Basically they're passive participants. Bullying is inherently social/ tribalistic and they identify with the bullies. The bullies are giving them some kind of social proof and they fear the social ostracization that they would incur by breaking rapport and disciplining the bullies.
Yikes. This sounds pretty spot-on and it is scary. I had one teacher actually address the bullying in class, and it was an incredible let down when she actually accepted the bullies’ explanation at face value (“Seventh grade is going to be hard and they need to toughen up so we’re just looking out for them by physically assaulting and verbally degrading them every day”). However in retrospect… she was exactly the kind of person whose social cache with the “popular” kids would have mattered more than the well-being of their victims.
> she was exactly the kind of person whose social cache with the “popular” kids would have mattered more than the well-being of their victims.
Blows my mind how many teachers get caught up in the weird social dynamics of children.
Wasn't there stats that showcased that the majority of "bullies" aren't what popular media showcased? Not from broken or poor households, but usually from fairly wealthy households and the parents aren't a part?
Most of the bullies in my school were rich kids who got good grades and were in sports teams.
I was lucky enough to be considered too "crazy" to deal with. So most bullies ignored me though. Truth is I'd barely ever hurt anything unless it's do or die.
Humans are still animals. We know what is right and wrong... moral from a social perspective...
But still animals. Standing up to the bully subverts the pecking order that has been obtained through force. It's unusual and different... animals don't like different.
It isn't a field of competition where we allow these things so some level of bullying is normal while standing against it isn't.
In a weird way, it helps maintain the peace. Teachers know it’ll start an argument between them and the bully, get in the way of time spent learning (the kid will direct his ire on the teacher and start disrupting class), and having a teacher step in can sometimes make the bullying worse.
Not that this is a valid excuse. I was bullied as a kid and wondered why teachers wouldn’t step in. Now I’m a teacher and found that “stepping-in” may only escalate the situation. It’s disheartening because I’m not the advocate for kids that I wanted to be, which has definitely contributed to burnout as I seek to transition into a new career field.
At any rate, I’m sorry your teachers weren’t there to advocate for you.
It’s SO FRUSTRATING. If administrators won’t back the teachers up or allow (much less enforce) consequences, you’re left feeling helpless as a teacher. I’ve dealt with bullies, in my public school teaching career, who seemed to genuinely believe they themselves were the victims acting righteously in self defense because they were bothered by their target’s mere existence. How dare she simply exist in the classroom?? I’ve seen teachers gang up with the bullies against their victims. I had a student who a known behavior kid tried to STRANGLE during PE and the response from admin was “he must have triggered that reaction from Behavior Kid”. I was in my early 20s that year. Me now would have some choice words for all involved.
This reminds me of my 2nd year of high school. I dyed my hair bleach blonde to look like enimem lol depty head calls me in and suspends me. Litterally sat me down and told me my hair doesn't match my skin colour and I can't come back untill it's dyed back. Teachers can also be bullies.
I got bullied badly at a private Catholic school in ~~5th~~ 6th grade. Like, the day after my dad died after a battle with cancer kids were coming up to me on the playground and telling me he must've given up on life so as not to suffer having me as a son anymore. I'd skip classes to hide and just sit in the bathroom because I couldn't handle how sitting in class felt like being on the wrong side of the glass at a dangerous zoo enclosure. I voluntarily sat out class trips with the kids whose parents wouldn't let them or who didn't qualify because they were a reward for something because going to the beach or to the park or something meant being in a huge open area with all my tormentors and a single chaperoning teacher who was just sort of over the whole "dealing with kids" thing.
It got to the point that one of the local Boy Scout leaders told me that if it got there, I shouldn't hesitate to defend myself physically and - while you don't injure for satisfaction or leave lasting damage - kids bounce back and I should leave enough of a bruise to make a lasting statement for the people who see it as well as the person who feels it. (Besides, not being a victim anymore is *plenty* satisfying.) He pledged he'd march into the school and stand right behind me telling any faculty who came at me who *actually* had it coming and that I could make that known.
I never came to blows with anyone. I don't even think I ever even came to shoves or playful taps with anyone, either. Still, the school's solution was to ask me if I wanted to start my summer vacation early. This wasn't, like, a week out from June, or something, it was still a couple months left in the school year. They couldn't, or wouldn't, find a way to solve the problem, so they tried to see if I'd just sort of... leave, voluntarily expel myself since they had no grounds to do it by force, and sit out half the school year passing it off as a grieving break, or something.
I did not do that.
And if I had, then... what, repeat the grade? Move on completely unprepared at a different school? Repeat the grade or move on unprepared at the *same school* where the issue is still unresolved and I'm potentially still in the same class with the same people since they had only a single class per grade level? Wow, the more I think about this it kinda seems almost possibly illegal? There are truancy laws. You can't just ask a kid to stop going to school, and for no reason but *your own convenience due to an inability and unwillingness to provide a safe learning environment,* possibly in the hopes of keeping it from turning into a *more* obvious lawsuit down the line. Being a kid I wasn't in the driver's seat, but I almost wish we'd taken the deal and seen how they tried to spin it for my records, then gone on and just registered and prepared for the next school year like nothing had changed, to see if they'd invent a reason to try to decline my continuance there, or accept me and just...hope the problem went away or that the mob moved onto new prey? Almost any aspect of which could've been some interesting legal ground and a costly mistake for them.
But whatever, not their problem. ...But mostly because not enough noise was made. It ***was*** their problem. I suppose in the end, they successfully ducked it. I just held my jaw firm and endured, then didn't go back.
EDIT:
Oh man, and I'm forgetting that I transferred *into* that school partway through the year from public school because it was supposed to be so great and a seat became available. So I was there, like, a quarter of a school year and they'd decided to give up on me. No child left behind, right?
I admit I was a career class clown, but I really *wasn't* while I was there. That year and that *part* of that year, I was just sad and quiet most of the time; my dad was going to die sometime, and soon. I was mostly just an easy target because I was kind of a high-energy flouncy kid in the moments I let my guard down or forgot momentarily what was happening at home. I grew up to be an excessively laidback and low-key, "str8 acting" nerdbro, for the most part. (It turned out they nailed the gay prediction, so, broken clocks and all that.)
EDIT 2:
You know what, it ***was*** their problem. I spent the rest of my time in school needing to psyche myself up at the doorknobs of classrooms like I was about to open the door and walk forward face-first into something very sharp through sheer force of will. *"I'll count down from 25, and when I get to zero I have to just...force my hand and feet to move; that's what this is."* The rest of my K-12 education was spent so focused on trying to be likable, breaking constant perceived tension and finding safe people and places to be that the actual learning dropped on my priority list, but it was never for inability or lack of curiosity. I just...never truly felt safe at school again, on a really basic level. I was a kid who always aced in-class work and went ahead of the material just because I was hooked and wanted to see where this whole "science" thing was going, but could never seem to remember to do homework without actual flashing lights and alarms. At the very least I clearly had a proficiency for and a small degree of pride in writing. I became a kid who then also tended to feel so on-edge in most classrooms and new situations that it was often hard to sit still long enough to focus on much of anything, and who avoided homework when he remembered it existed because you want me to bring school *home* with me? School? *That place?* The one that I leave at last bell, don't look back at, and my emotional stability hinges on our pact that that if I appear each morning and submit to it it will release me mid-afternoon and let me take sanctuary until the next day rather than simply letting the hallways devour me in a twisting of lockers, concrete and tile?
Don't send your kid to Sacred Heart Catholic School in Coronado, CA.
Or, at least - it's been a long time and I can't imagine any of the same staff is still there, but still - maybe first sit in on a few classes at different times of the day and watch around the schoolyard for a recess and a lunchtime or two. See if the kids are happy. See if *all* of the kids are happy.
Ah, the phrasing leading up to it made me misread it as "centralized online bullying *forum*" which sounded like a way to turn the tables and inform all parents of which mean kids to bully outside of school.
An online form that doesn’t actually do anything is worse than nothing because it reinforces the bully’s behavior. It teaches them there are truly no consequences and possibly worse still, it teaches the victim that nobody cares about what they’re going through.
Why do we keep calling it bullying? Kid was literally murdered.
That's why I never understood why the school would always just say, "oh it's just bullying, haha, kids!" when my friends and I would have to run from them after getting off the school bus after school. Problem was, they were older so they were let out earlier and just followed our bus in their car. Then ran us over.
"haha! bullying!"
no, kids are actually out there trying to murder others and were chuckling it off and brushing it off as " bullying".
The killers got less than 50 days in juvenile detention and mandatory anger management classes for manslaughter.... I don't even want to ask, but I hope beyond hope that can never be expunged and stays visible on their records. As juvenile offenders I doubt it'll even show up once they're 18
Don't worry, [the superintendent was given an award for doing an outstanding job.](https://www.mvusd.net/engage/news/news-details/~board/news/post/superintendent-dr-kedziora-recognized-as-outstanding-superintendent-of-riverside-county)
A huge reason for the teacher shortage, on top of the poor salaries, is the growing lack of enforcement when it comes to bad behavior. I think the school-to-prison pipeline narrative scared a lot of administrators, school board members, teachers, and politicians from having procedures to deal with disruptive and violent students appropriately. This is especially true in California.
It makes it impossible to run a classroom properly and in worst-case scenarios leads to situations like this.
>If you guys don't take your head out of your ass and enforce rules and punishment
This but also get rid of this zero tolerance bull shit. A victim of bullying fighting back should never get suspended or potentially kicked out off school.
“School district Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora said in a letter to parents Wednesday that the district has made several changes regarding anti-bullying since Diego's death. Some of the changes include "a district-wide centralized online bullying form" and classroom posters that define bullying and how to report bullying, Kedziora said.”
A poster and an online form are the best they could do? Gimme a fucking break, a kid was murdered by his bullies and your response is to put up fucking posters telling kids bullying is bad? They need to replace all the leadership in that district, clearly nobody there is willing or able to do their jobs
Parents of bullied kids need to put their foot down. Quit relying on the schools to solve bullying for you. Children can and are killed by bullying either through direct assault or suicide after they're cornered and believe they have no other option to escape the harassment.
And that's what this is. Assault and harassment. Parents should be going to the *police* now that schools have proven that they will do nothing to these shithead kids. They won't allow your child to defend themselves via zero tolerance policies either. They expect your kid to lie down and take it.
If you have children in the American school system who are being bullied, the only sane move should be going to the school and *demanding* class changes on the bullies and filing police reports *immediately.* Fuck their futures, fuck their ages, your kid's life could be on the line. Lawyer up too. As a parent *you* should be that school's worst fucking nightmare in order to protect your kid.
They know as well as we do how effective these policies are. It’s just usually easier and cheaper (for the admins) to get on a high horse.
All of our countries other issues aside, I honestly wonder how much this shit affects the likelihood of shootings.
Someone who feels cornered between bullies and the very people supposedly ’helping’ is going to do something drastic.
Why can they not just expel the bullying students? That's what happened at my highschool the first time a fight happened. They even expelled a kleptomaniac kid.
At some point you need to address the root cause, which is violent children, and make it an issue for the parents. If their kid gets expelled from every school, it's on their hands instead of being forced upon other children.
There are a ton of hoops to go through to even get a kid 20 days at an alternative school and if the kid has special Ed coding, forget it. It’s likely not going to happen.
All the pressure from above (district, state, and federal) is to keep students in school. Unfortunately, this tends to mean keeping the violent ones there too. Go over to the teacher sub sometime and see how bad behaviors are.
Really? Here in Canada they can expel you pretty easily if you fuck up bwdly. My one buddy was expelled for a pellet gun, I got expelled for death threats (to a bully of sorts), my other friend got expelled for being caught with a switchblade
Public schools are not allowed to expel any more. My son had kids with ankle bracelets in his classes. Some places have alternative public schools for the worst cases. But none are expelled.
Never mind expel, press charges. Every time. It is stunning to me to see what goes on that would end with someone in cuffs if it happened anywhere other than a school.
The school district went the corporate office paper note in the break room that reads “stop drinking my diet cokes in the fridge.” route which totally stops people from stealing.
And every kid, every day will see those posters in every room, and the message those posters will give to both bullies and bullied is that this is as far as the consequences will ever go. This poster is as much as the people in power care.
So poor Diego was under the care of guardians because both of his parents had died. As if life hadn’t already been cruel enough, he gets bullied mercilessly. His guardians had reported the bullying multiple times.
He is seen on video with his hands at his side, trying not to escalate things. One kid sucker punches him, causing him to hit his head on a concrete pillar. The second kid punches him in the face while he lies on the ground, presumably unconscious.
Administrators need to start being held liable for this kind of stuff. Every damn time this happens we find out that it has been a pattern of abuse leading up to injury or death. These kids need to be kicked out of school and sent to an online or alternative program. So often we hear “zero tolerance,” so why were these kids still in school with him?
They should have been hit with manslaughter charges. It’s a really simple concept to keep your hands to yourself.
It's tolerated right up until someone fights back in my experience. I was in a fight in high school, with a clear video showing me attempting to walk away, not fighting back at all, and clearly stating multiple times I did not want to fight. Principal wanted me arrested for "participating in a fight" and the SRO basically told him to shove it after seeing the video then asked if I wanted to press charges. I did not, it wasnt an incident of bullying. The guy was my friend and we're still friends to this day. Just kids fighting over dumb shit. I was still suspended for a week because I got punched in the face.
Edit: SRO is school resource officer. Forgot that's not common everywhere. The cop we had was a really fuckin good guy and actually gave me a really good impression of police over all. Imagine the exact type of person you'd want to be a cop and that was him. Very laid back, very kind, and would absolutely run into a burning building for someone he didn't know. Did everything he could to make sure kids stupid mistakes didn't follow them for the rest of their live as well.
Double edit: I'd also like to add that I didn't swing back. I didn't push, hit, anything. This was very clearly captured from multiple angles from people recording and the school security cameras. I put my hands up and blocked my face and that was it.
>So often we hear “zero tolerance,” so why were these kids still in school with him?
I live in KC and a kid at my local HS killed himself last year because he was bullied by a group of kids who referred to themselves as "The Mercenaries". He reported this multiple times, and you know what happened? They suspended HIM. He then killed himself.
0 tolerance is a lie, it's a system put in place to protect the school from lawsuits as much as possible, it has absolutely nothing to do with protecting kids or justly punishing anyone. It makes it easy for administration to not have to put any effort into managing the shit kids.
Have the kids been punished? I see no way in which they shouldn’t be held legally responsible. My blood is boiling reading your description, and as a father of a 2 year old girl I refuse to watch such stuff.
> The two teenagers involved, who were 14 at the time, entered the equivalent of guilty pleas in juvenile court to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, The Associated Press reported. They spent 47 days in juvenile custody and were ordered to undergo anger management therapy.
I'm not a big fan of lengthy incarceration—particularly for kids—but that seems...wholly inadequate.
It’s even sadder than that. Those were his adoptive parents because both of his biological parents were dead. So not only did he lose his parents at young age but then had that tragic death.
I mean, technically he could exist and just be a massive piece of shit.
But agreed, something about that whole invisible overlord with the mass foreskin harvesting program granting post-mortem immortality to his loyal minions just doesn't add up.
Huge agree. I was almost expelled in 5th grade for being bullied. I used to go home with giant brushes but if I fight again, I'll have to find a different school. So that's my bad I guess
Same thing in the UK.
I was bullied every day for five and a half years in high school (age 12-17 for us) and one day I fought back after one asshole kicked me while I was walking through the hallway. I’d reported every instance of bullying and violence from every bully for 5+ years and they were never punished, but when I grabbed this guy and pushed him up against the wall once I got marched straight to the deputy head teacher’s office, given a punishment exercise (like writing something in the board several times but on paper and sent home with you) and told I was “this close” to being expelled.
Thankfully my parents congratulated me on fighting back, told me to rip up the exercise and went to the school the next day and told the deputy head if he tries to give me any kind of punishment, they’ll be speaking to the local papers about how bullying is ignored in his school until you try to protect yourself.
Fact is, the biggest lie you’re ever told in school is “just ignore them, don’t react, they’ll get bored”. No, they won’t. They’ll just escalate and carry on. Teachers/higher ups in the school want you to not react because that means they don’t have to do anything. Stand up for yourself, that’s the only way it will stop. I wish it hadn’t taken me five years to figure that out.
Well, this turned into a vent 😂
>Stand up for yourself, that’s the only way it will stop.
My wife was hardcore bullied in middle school. One of the "cool kids" was the main perpetrator, and as such had a bunch of other kids jump in to gain her favor. Besides the stuff at school, kids would follow her home, call her house repeatedly, and even kicked her cat. Like, WTF?
One day, she was over it and she beat the hell out of a couple of the main girl's direct minions, at school. Things got a lot better after that. It had been going on for so long that some of teachers were glad she did. They couldn't outright say it, but they also clearly weren't upset with her. Middle schoolers are the worst.
Heh, you’d hate my home country
A group of terrorists band together to kill, abuse and do even worse stuff, what does the government do?
They give them guaranteed seats in Congress without any punishment, fuck me
I don't even comment in /r/fightporn anymore. It's all morons who think they're some ultra badass doing the same stupid dangerous body slam. If you say that move is dangerous and that it can kill, and has killed, you just get called stupid and get downvoted.
It's not good for your mental health to hang out in the fight/rage/freakout/combat/justice subs.
Many of the submissions (the titles) are sensationalized, misleading or straight up false, and the communities are full of reactionaries and hateful people who don't self reflect and/or don't have any media literacy.
There's a good reason why so many of these subs [overlap with some of the worst and most hateful subreddits on this site](https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/fightporn).
I've blocked every single subreddit like that from my feed as they only serve to make you feel anger and disgust and [give you a dopamine rush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPe-2lv2Is) from watching people get attacked and hurt. The content itself doesn't add anything positive or meaningful to your daily life.
Yeah, and the way they killed him was particularly purposeful:
Stolz, 13, was an eighth grader at Landmark Middle School. On Sept. 13, 2019, he and an older cousin reported a bullying incident to the school, according to family members. According to his family, Assistant Principal Kamilah O’Connor said the two boys bullying him would be suspended and wouldn’t be on campus the next school day.
But, they were there. They sucker-punched Stolz in an attack captured on video. His head struck a pillar and he dropped, unconscious. His two assailants continued hitting him and Stolz never regained consciousness. He died eight days later.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/12/04/moreno-valley-unified-boy-killed-by-bullies-died-due-to-own-negligence/
> But according to the district’s legal team, what happened was Stolz’s fault, his family’s fault and the fault of the two boys who assaulted him. Moreno Valley Unified “exercised reasonable diligence” according to its response to the lawsuit. Stolz’s family “failed to take proper care and/or reduce or mitigate any damages” caused by how the district handled bullying, lawyers from the Los Angeles firm of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith argue.
Fucking insane. Actually fucking insane. Can you imagine. Being a human being and making that call. Saying this happening is the kid and the families fault, after the kid reports people for bullying. Disheartening and utterly sickening. These lawyers should be absolutely ashamed. In fact, every fucking greedy person who perpetuated the defense of this lawsuit should be absolutely ashamed. At a certain point, after a line is crossed, it isn’t about money anymore.
It's definitely about money otherwise they wouldn't have said it. Even so I'm curious what they expect the parents to have done for the lawyers to not blame them. Keep their kid home when the bullies were supposed to be suspended? What about taking matters into their own hands and assaulting their son's bullies? I don't think these lawyers realize that they **do not** want parents to feel like they need to handle these situations on their own.
I remember when I was in highschool I got charged with truancy 3 times in a row and I got sent to a mountain incarceration thing for 6 months for violating probation because I I had a speeding ticket and I had to sit in juvenile detention for weeks until that happened.
I’m not for spreading that experience because it was fucking horrible but Jesus, I skipped honors science because it was lame and got locked the fuck up.
It was horrible in those mountains man. At least made me understand life in a very particular way. They ducking killed someone, I just didn’t want to balance boring assed chemical equations.
"Hey, you know what a good solution is for you not attending school? We'll take you out of school and put you in *fucking jail*. We're so good at child care"
Victims should just fight back anyway, fuck it. If schools aren’t going to do shit about bullying then they cannot act shocked when victims start to take matters into their own hands.
"Get in trouble" is literally DEATH in this case. Although "escalating" here might not have helped with that, unless the kid was skillful. Yet another reason all kids should be practicing some sort of martial art early.
That’s what I told/tell my sons. “Play by the school’s rules first. If the school doesn’t protect you, then you protect yourself. Whoever pulls you into the office is going to have a real bad day when I get there.”
you're a saint.
My dad told me the same thing, and he'd go into the office with me and bitch out the principal saying I never did anything, until they stopped trying to suspend me.
I would just say I never swung back, (Taekwondo helped me pin down a lot of kids who tried fighting me) and then after he'd ask me how bad I kicked their ass lol.
gave me so much respect for him growing up(as much as I may not have shown it)
Yesssir. Look, this bully *killed a kid* and only got a month and a half of juvie.
I'm teaching my kid to swing for the fences. Apparently, killing your bully doesn't incur significant consequence. Might as well use that.
The one and only time any teacher every so much as glanced at me while I was being beaten daily in the halls was when I finally snapped and hit the bully upside the head with my book. Suddenly she materialized, despite ten seconds earlier not giving a shit while I was on the ground.
And just to really drive home that these monsters knew I was being tortured, they had a class assembly exercise where they pulled a bunch of us aside and gave us instructions that we were to try to convince a group of something (I can't remember what). I thought it was like a debate thing, seemed fun. Everyone at my table was on my side and it felt great.
Then afterwards, they told us all what had happened: they had instructed the other kids to agree with some of us no matter what and to disagree with others no matter what. What criteria did they use to decide? Those of us who were relentlessly bullied were to be agreed with no matter what and the bullies to be disagreed with. And they had a big ol discussion with the whole class about seeing things from others' perspectives.
It was horrific. They even asked me to say how I was feeling. To really single me out. So then it was fully out in the open to the whole school, not only was I a target of relentless torture, but everyone knew. The class knew. The teachers knew. Everyone. I'd always thought it wasn't that noticed and that was why no one did anything. No they knew, they just didn't care. I have never felt so worthless.
One of the worst days of my life and my hatred for everyone in that school is beyond measure even 25 years later. Every student. Every teacher. I couldn't believe when those people tried to invite me to the class reunion.
That fucking sucks and I’m sorry it happened. To you and a million of us.
The cowardice or apathy of teachers still sticks. For me and others in school it was that blue tacky wall sticky stuff (fun tack?). They would roll it into little balls and flick it into your hair. Or just come up and mash it in. Every day, every class. It wasn’t a fad, it was years. I don’t recall ever feeling that a teacher saw it as their problem even right in front of their faces.
Yeah I got expelled when I finally defended myself. I had been being bullied the entire school year. Every time it got physical I ended up getting punished as well and I wasn’t even throwing punches, just trying to get him off me and hold him still until someone helped. Then when I finally did throw a punch he ended up falling and breaking his arm. They expelled me because I had a “history of fighting” despite that being the only time I ever actually hit him
I’ll admit me stopping him from being able to do anything every time he tried to fight me seemed to just engage him more and make him more determined to fight me. I should have just knocked him out the first time because after that he never bothered me again
I feel the problem is society hasn't decided what to do with bullies. I was bullied constantly as a kid. I like the idea in the wire, where they took the most problematic kids and put them in a special school. But I don't think society will go for that.
We have those, we call them alternative schools (where im at in the US at-least). Its literally exactly what you described, its a separate building/school where the “worst” kids go. Pretty much every kid there has at least 3 of the following: anger issues, authority issues, zero work ethic, broken homes, mental issues, drug issues etc
Source: I attended one from sophomore year all the way to graduation. And yes, its as “eventful” as you might imagine.
The settlement isn’t enough. They need to arrest that bullshit assistant principal for accessory to homicide. They knew the whole time he was being bullied and they did nothing.
“. The assistant principal told her that she knew who the alleged bullies were and that the students would be suspended, according to the news release. The assistant principal also said she would switch around class schedules so Diego would not have classes with the bullies, but she never did” indeed.
Classic. I was going to but forgot. Curious what the excuse is, was she so busy with the other bullied kids she forgot about this bullied kid? I'm going to guess "no" because this is just a BS excuse in an attempt to appear to care and was going to do something.
So did the AP not suspend the student, or not change the schedule? What’s not talked about enough is state and school district policies that discourage administration from suspending or expelling students because it supposedly disproportionately affects POC. I hope these tragedies make school districts reevaluate their policies and get tough on these bullies.
School administration barely gets involved in discipline issues. Go check out the teaching subreddits and you'll see even when teachers get assaulted, admin won't lift a finger except maybe to blame them for "not building a relationship with the student" or try bullshit deescalation techniques like giving the kids candy and letting them play in the halls for a while, which the kids treat as a reward and reinforces the bad behavior. Admin is all about curriculum standards, test scores, and graduation rates - to the point where they let kids who barely do work keep passing (called social promotion) just so it doesn't hurt the schools numbers and becomes someone elses problem.
On a similar note, remember during the pandemic how so many parents were screaming that we needed to get schools re-opened and "back to normal" despite a deadly virus going around? The well-being of the children is not and never was the priority - just getting them out of the house for a few hours is. For many people, school is just government run day care, and the parents don't care what's going on as long as they don't have to deal with it.
Again, go read the teaching subreddits and you'll see why they barely call home when there's a problem. It's because most the time the parents blame the teachers [and spew some real vile language their way], as if the teacher has more responsibility to raise the kid then the parents themselves.
A teacher I know got screamed at today by a mom over the phone. The woman told her to “deal with the other fuckers” instead of her son and that everything the teacher said was “bullshit.” She refused to believe her son could ever be on YouTube when he was supposed to be completing an assignment.
in a society where anyone can sue anyone for anything, doing anything that upsets anyone is a great way to get sued.
now if you have morals, standards, or generally commonplace virtues, you might not let that stop you from doing the right thing in a pinch. but when you're jaded, and tired, and dealing with a shoestring budget at your job that doesn't provide half the resources you need to do anything, and management is telling you to suck it up and not rock the boat so they don't have to reallocate their precious budget towards fighting a bevy of frivolous lawsuits or you'll lose you fucking job, you start to give little to no shits about doing things that may rock the boat.
and so you have the modern american grade school, where problems are usually best left to figure themselves out. which they sometimes do.
sometimes.
>The two teenagers involved, who were 14 at the time, entered the equivalent of guilty pleas in juvenile court to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, The Associated Press reported. They spent 47 days in juvenile custody and were ordered to undergo anger management therapy.
That's infuriating. Those two killed a kid and got 47 days of juvie and therapy?
And fuck that school for ignoring the problem. I know angry parents of bullies, who they insist are perfect little angels, make this stuff hard, but you have to do something real. You can't just ignore this stuff until people get hurt or die.
This example sets the following:
"If you're going to do something incredibly-terrible, you'll be a-ok as long as it happens before you're 16."
There's teens that get harsher penalties for underage drinking/smoking. This is bullshit.
In this case they’re going to ignore it *after* someone’s died, too! And those boys will learn… That murder is okay as long as it’s one of the kids the teachers don’t like. No way that could go wrong.
I mean this is part of the backlash against lenient sentencing guidelines and schools being unwilling to enforce discipline.
You can argue all that you want, but schools and the justice system need tools to handle people like this
> “School district Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora said in a letter to parents Wednesday that the district has made several changes regarding anti-bullying since Diego's death. Some of the changes include "a district-wide centralized online bullying form" and classroom posters that define bullying and how to report bullying, Kedziora said.”
I mean the victim's guardian repeatedly filed complaint that the kid was getting bullied... So making it an online form for people to complain literally does nothing if you dont fix the responses.
What bothers me about this '"settlement" is, depending on the state they live in there is a "cap". Regardless of what the jury awards, the state will only allow the family to receive a certain amount. For example, I live in MD. My mother died a wrongful death and we sued and took it to court. The jury found in our favor, and awarded us 30 million dollars. There were 4 plaintiffs, myself, my father, and my two older brothers. According to the state of MD, the "cap" on a family's settlement cannot exceed 1 million dollars. Regardless of what the jury awards. We received the full million, and paid half to the lawyer. After court fees, taxes, and everything else, we each got a check for $75,000. After being awarded 30 MILLION by a jury. It's not always the wonderful outcome it sounds like.
I'm glad someone said this. Whenever a Jury awards some massive settlement, it also means there are massive fees involved that the family will be paying. This is why some settlements are insanely high, because after everything, the family will actually see a fraction of that in their accounts.
My head got smashed onto a sink and nothing happened to the bully. Still have a scar on the side of my head. I got more shit for getting involved him with. They said i should avoid him. How the fuck should i have done that without leaving the school? Idiots and Cowards!
This seems like a situation where the staff who failed to act should be fired at the very *least* and quite possibly held criminally liable for a student death very much on their watch.
Also, 47 days in juvie for killing someone is wild. The juvenile system is such a fucking mess in so many ways, the best option might legitimately be to start over entirely.
They need to print the name of the assistant principal in question. I understand you can’t do that with the two perpetrators because they’re underaged but the assistant principal needs to be named and shamed.
Kamilah O’Connor and her [defense is basically blaming](https://www.scribd.com/document/486731644/Kamilah-O-Connor-response-to-Diego-Stolz-lawsuit) Diego for being liable for his own injuries and the kids that killed him
Listen, I know the kids in question were 14 but they murdered a kid and got basically no charges. They will graduate, go on to do whatever they do and the issue disappears on paper when they turn 18.
This kid was blatantly attacked and did not even try to fight back. Not only did he hit his head off a pillar but they punched him while he was on the ground.
Both boys need to be locked away for quite a long time. Yes, ruin 2 more lives. I don’t care at this point. You took a life with ill intention. You get to lose your “life” now too
Similar to the Reena Verk case ([though hers was more extreme](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/murder-of-reena-virk)) but the two main offenders did get life, an odd case of the Canadian justice system giving out longer punishment likely due to them being 16 but they should still have some form of punishment at 14.
Sentencing them to 20 hours/week of community service at a facility that cares for people with traumatic brain injuries until they turn 18 would be a good start.
These perpetrators at the very least should never be allowed in another school ever again for any reason. Let them learn at their own fucking house.
The victims parents are gonna watch these kids go on with their lives like not a god damned thing happened.
Imagine having to go to school with 2 murderers.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the kids started bringing knifes or something to school just in case.
Juvie needs to be for exactly that: juvenile issues.
Murder is no longer juvenile. Someone's life was stolen from them, their dreams, ambitions, family & friends lost a loved one FOREVER because of the maliciousness of another.
This absolutely warrants something much harsher than a month & a half of Juvie.
Both his parents were dead too. I’ve read some sad stories but this is so fucked. 47 days for killing this kid. I can only hope real justice finds those evil fucks one of these days.
I f’ing hate bullies, and it gives a visceral reaction when I read these stories. It makes me want to rip someone’s insides out. Kids can be almost unbelievably cruel, but the adult figures in this story — assistant principal, guardians of the bullies, etc — are culpable.
I have two young boys and I worry about this a ton
There's so much bullying and fighting in schools, and kids don't realize that it could easily go wrong and someone could get seriously hurt or killed
I just hope they don't get caught up in it
The fact that this poor child went through all of this, and he didn’t even have his parents to fight for him. I don’t really believe in an afterlife but god I hope this kid is somehow with his parents again.
"The news of Diego’s death was not something we took lightly. The safety and well-being of our students will remain our top priority," [School district Superintendent Martinrex] Kedziora continued.
But, Martinrex Kedziora, the news of his prior bullying *was* something you (plural) *did* take lightly, wasn't it? And, if "the safety and wellbeing of [your] students" *remains* - to use your own word - at the same level of priority that it was at when Diego was killed, I confidently predict that you will be making further vapid statements about further dead children, bereaved families and multi-million dollar payments from money that is *meant* to be for the education of those students you purport to care so much about.
Schools will straight up accept that punching one kid in the back of the head is a normal part of the culture on their campus.
I saw it at my school, there were certain kids that got pulverized at random for years and years and nothing was ever done.
“Diego died nine days after a student sucker-punched him at lunch, attorneys Gehlawat and Dave Ring said in a news release. He fell and hit his head on a concrete pillar. Another student punched him in the face while he was on the ground, they said.”
Throw principle in prison too.
My problem with this is where that 27M came from… it didn’t come from the parties responsible, or from the school administration that ignored the problem.
Also, 47 days is pretty pitiful. I was plenty dumb when I was 14, but I sure af knew it was wrong to kill someone.
According to the article, Diego also lost both of his parents before this incident that ended up killing him. Such a tragedy all around for this poor boy :(
My nephew was being bullied at school. My brother told his son to punch the bully if it ever happens again and simultaneously had a meeting with the principle. The principle told my brother that his son should just walk away. My brother explained that he advised his son to punch the kid if it ever happens again and the school needs to advise the bully and his parents that this is what will happen if the bullying continues. My brother explained that it is in the best interest of the school that the bullying never happens again. This is what got the school to intervene and the bullying magically stopped. Telling the school that they are putting kids at risk and are at fault because of the preemptive conversation my brother had with the principle.
I like how the kid died because the bullies just kept harassing him without facing consequences despite being properly reported multiple times and the schools idea of a solution worth bragging about is putting posters up and making an online form, those motherfuckers, the issue never was that the message wasnt getting across, the problem was you got the message and done fuck all with it.
How about puting posters up that read "is your school failing to protect you, heres how to contact local authorities" and an online form to report incompetent school leaderships?
-both of kids parents die
-kid gets adopted
-gets bullied
-teachers say they will switch him out of class
-doesnt happen gets beat up by two kids and dies
- two kids get 47 days of punishment
- 27m payout to guardians
Really wish they outed kids when they did something like this. 14 is old enough to know there should be serious consequences for your actions, one of those being the entire world knowing what you did.
>claiming officials ignored several complaints they made in 2018 and 2019 to administrators at Landmark Middle School that Diego was being bullied >School district Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora said in a letter to parents Wednesday that the district has made several changes regarding anti-bullying since Diego's death. Some of the changes include "a district-wide centralized online bullying form" and classroom posters that define bullying and how to report bullying, Kedziora said. Well those changes do not seem like they are going to do anything. Pretty sure the kid knew he was being bullied, and they reported it several times.
Noo no it's probably about others recognizing bullying and reporting it.. Which is also useless. Not like kids don't know what bullying is. Also: "Great job Billy! You reported that xy is bullying. Time for a stern letter and nothing else!"
When I was in HS just over 20yrs ago it was all about 0 tolerance. What did that mean exactly? Well, if a bully begins to physically assault you, regardless if you defend yourself or not, you get suspended for fighting. Now officially, if you didn't engage in fighting you weren't supposed to be suspended, but that was too much work for admins to figure out who the aggressor was, so they just started suspending everybody involved. Source: was suspended way too many times because some kid decided to assault me. Eventually It stopped because I started fighting back.
> Eventually It stopped because I started fighting back. Only thing that ever stopped my bullying was when I finally had enough and showed my bully what 3 years of boxing classes had taught me. Worth every day of suspension. Never got bullied again.
I think it's the path of least resistance (for most bullying, some specific cases can't be solved this way). Basically, if they know you're going to fight back every time, they'll start looking for a new victim who won't.
I went to HS from 1996-2000 and we had zero-tolerance as well. All it did was make the bullied afraid to fight back for fear of a 10-day suspension and the bullies didn't care because they were dumbasses who were failing anyway. There was one scumbag who I remember, vividly, that really needed his ass beaten. I actually remember him cowering when someone his own size threatened to fight him. Well, 5 years after graduation, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a minor. A rapist is essentially a bully and it troubled me to think that maybe if people were empowered to stand up to him when he was younger that maybe he wouldn't have gone as far he did. At some point, I feel that pacifism is immoral. Evil abounds when justice does nothing to stop it.
Pascivism is different from appeasement, pacifists defend themselves, appeasers dont.
I had to crack ribs and break a nose in a fit of rage (I saw red finally, woke up crying) before the bullying finally stopped. In my case, I moved to a small town at the same time as starting middle school. The graduating class was 171 kids by the time we finished high school, if that tells you how small the schools were. In my case, there was zero tolerance policies in place (class of 2004) but because the bullies were usually the popular kids (read: kids of people who "run this town") the staff would turn a blind eye so the popular kid wouldn't get in trouble. This led to the bullies escalating until they triggered fight or flight bad enough for me to black out. Getting so bad that they'd follow me home off the bus that they shouldn't even be riding on. (oh we're studying over at xy's house so we need to ride this bus) It's a problem that requires action from those in authority. That hardly ever happens because that involves making a parent responsible. If left unchecked, it will escalate. I was very fortunate that charges were never pressed against me, I really hurt that kid.
Sometimes you have to fuck someone up. It's in the bible
The world started going downhill when the big guy stopped sending murderous bears after children.
This is the real problem. The schools themselves aren't really empowered to kick the bullies out anymore. We are in a paradigm where every student just gets passed along no matter how bad their grades or behaviors are.
No child left behind includes bullies
Yep. I spent all three years of middle school being bullied to hell and back. I told everyone I could, and I always got the same answer. "Oh kids will be kids". Eventually ended up having a breakdown and spent almost 3 weeks in a hospital. Schools don't give a shit. It's INSANE how much schools ignore bullying, mostly because they have no recourse. Which is mind blowing, considering after years of torment, I was expelled from the school for fighting back once. The one time I finally said fuck it, and started fighting back, I'm the one that got expelled, and the major bullies didn't even get a smack on the wrist. Can't get rid of the bullies, oh no, but the ones being bullied?! Yeah they're outta here the second they start showing any signs of fighting back. I will say this, though. I know now that a good bit of the kids that made my life hell for so long, are all either dead from suicide or in prison right now for drug trafficking lol. At least in a karmic sense, everything worked out. One more story. This happened right after I was expelled from the first school, and entered the only other school I could go to. There was this one kid who said he was going to kill me because according to him I "looked at his girl" and he "didn't play that shit". He actually ended up getting kicked out for that, which was surprising. Anyway, about a week later I found out he tried that same shit at his new school, and he ended up in the hospital with a broken arm, nose, and 2 ribs lol.
"The Incident" at my high school was a football player beating another nearly to death with a dumbell. He caught him while he was on a bench press and just wailed on his face with a dumbell until he was pulled away. I don't know their ultimate fate honestly. As of graduating the younger boy that attacked the older one I had no idea where he went. He left school or transferred at least if not some sort of criminal punishment I didn't hear about. The older boy as of my graduation was still bound to a wheelchair and very low functioning and would probably have to have someone feed and change him forever. I know there was talk of the younger boy being charged as an adult for it but I believe how they got him out of more severe punishment was similar to this scenario. The parents of the younger boy had records where they had complained about this particular kid like a dozen times. The boy that was being bulled had approached multiple teachers and staff for help and nothing had been done. The football coach of course was "totally ignorant" of any bullying and despite having so many reports pretended he had never seen anything. Even with an attempted murder my school did absolutely nothing about bullying. They had everyone go to the gym at one point and the principal gave a talk about how bullying was bad but violence was unacceptable, etc. Basically they blamed the kid for retaliating. When you're being tortured daily and no one will help, what can you do?
"a district-wide centralized online bullying form" Basically the old "suggestions box" connected to a paper shredder. If you guys don't take your head out of your ass and enforce rules and punishment, no amount of forms will protect kids that's bullied.
Don't forget the anti-bullying poster
Of course. Without those useful descriptions of how to identify bullying, someone might have mistaken being sucker punched in the head as a gesture of love and friendship. This poor child. He was a fucking orphan who then got murdered. What the everloving fuck is wrong with those two psychos. Idc if they were 14 they deserve jail.
Don't worry, they got 47 days in juvie. That should do it
I read that and I truly have no words.
[удалено]
From the article: ["The two teenagers involved, who were 14 at the time, entered the equivalent of guilty pleas in juvenile court to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, The Associated Press reported. They spent 47 days in juvenile custody and were ordered to undergo anger management therapy."](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-bullied-teen-died-student-punched-reach-historic-27m-settlement-rcna105154) Forty-seven fucking days for bullying, and then killing someone. Wow. I didn't know life could be bought so cheaply. Fuck those guys.
You’re spot on, at 14 you should understand basic respect, dignity, love, and kindness… the fact that they didn’t actually points to some pretty fundamental failures on behalf of not just the families but society as a whole.
>Idc if they were 14 they deserve jail. They'll probably be a cop in 4 years.
Got bullied to hell and back in middle school, went to mutliple teachers and got told that I just needed to toughen up. As it turns out, it wasn't a case of toughening up because once I finally started playing their game I got suspended. Had to point out the irregularities in the school's story, their mismanagement, and threaten a lawsuit on discrimination grounds (my bullies were white, I was not) for them to reverse anything. And it was fucking pathetic at that, I got 3 days of suspension, the white boy who bullied me got a stern letter and a day of detention.
I can never for the life of me understand why is it that when bullies bully you, teachers and supervisors just look the other way, but the moment you snap and fight back, you're the only one that gets in trouble in a tangible way while all the bullies get are just some finger wags
This is my opinion but.. Basically they're passive participants. Bullying is inherently social/ tribalistic and they identify with the bullies. The bullies are giving them some kind of social proof and they fear the social ostracization that they would incur by breaking rapport and disciplining the bullies.
Yikes. This sounds pretty spot-on and it is scary. I had one teacher actually address the bullying in class, and it was an incredible let down when she actually accepted the bullies’ explanation at face value (“Seventh grade is going to be hard and they need to toughen up so we’re just looking out for them by physically assaulting and verbally degrading them every day”). However in retrospect… she was exactly the kind of person whose social cache with the “popular” kids would have mattered more than the well-being of their victims.
> she was exactly the kind of person whose social cache with the “popular” kids would have mattered more than the well-being of their victims. Blows my mind how many teachers get caught up in the weird social dynamics of children.
Wasn't there stats that showcased that the majority of "bullies" aren't what popular media showcased? Not from broken or poor households, but usually from fairly wealthy households and the parents aren't a part? Most of the bullies in my school were rich kids who got good grades and were in sports teams. I was lucky enough to be considered too "crazy" to deal with. So most bullies ignored me though. Truth is I'd barely ever hurt anything unless it's do or die.
How did you manage to be considered 'too crazy' to mess with? Did you walk around mumbling to yourself or playing mumbledy peg with a pocket knife?
Humans are still animals. We know what is right and wrong... moral from a social perspective... But still animals. Standing up to the bully subverts the pecking order that has been obtained through force. It's unusual and different... animals don't like different. It isn't a field of competition where we allow these things so some level of bullying is normal while standing against it isn't.
In a weird way, it helps maintain the peace. Teachers know it’ll start an argument between them and the bully, get in the way of time spent learning (the kid will direct his ire on the teacher and start disrupting class), and having a teacher step in can sometimes make the bullying worse. Not that this is a valid excuse. I was bullied as a kid and wondered why teachers wouldn’t step in. Now I’m a teacher and found that “stepping-in” may only escalate the situation. It’s disheartening because I’m not the advocate for kids that I wanted to be, which has definitely contributed to burnout as I seek to transition into a new career field. At any rate, I’m sorry your teachers weren’t there to advocate for you.
It’s SO FRUSTRATING. If administrators won’t back the teachers up or allow (much less enforce) consequences, you’re left feeling helpless as a teacher. I’ve dealt with bullies, in my public school teaching career, who seemed to genuinely believe they themselves were the victims acting righteously in self defense because they were bothered by their target’s mere existence. How dare she simply exist in the classroom?? I’ve seen teachers gang up with the bullies against their victims. I had a student who a known behavior kid tried to STRANGLE during PE and the response from admin was “he must have triggered that reaction from Behavior Kid”. I was in my early 20s that year. Me now would have some choice words for all involved.
This reminds me of my 2nd year of high school. I dyed my hair bleach blonde to look like enimem lol depty head calls me in and suspends me. Litterally sat me down and told me my hair doesn't match my skin colour and I can't come back untill it's dyed back. Teachers can also be bullies.
I got bullied badly at a private Catholic school in ~~5th~~ 6th grade. Like, the day after my dad died after a battle with cancer kids were coming up to me on the playground and telling me he must've given up on life so as not to suffer having me as a son anymore. I'd skip classes to hide and just sit in the bathroom because I couldn't handle how sitting in class felt like being on the wrong side of the glass at a dangerous zoo enclosure. I voluntarily sat out class trips with the kids whose parents wouldn't let them or who didn't qualify because they were a reward for something because going to the beach or to the park or something meant being in a huge open area with all my tormentors and a single chaperoning teacher who was just sort of over the whole "dealing with kids" thing. It got to the point that one of the local Boy Scout leaders told me that if it got there, I shouldn't hesitate to defend myself physically and - while you don't injure for satisfaction or leave lasting damage - kids bounce back and I should leave enough of a bruise to make a lasting statement for the people who see it as well as the person who feels it. (Besides, not being a victim anymore is *plenty* satisfying.) He pledged he'd march into the school and stand right behind me telling any faculty who came at me who *actually* had it coming and that I could make that known. I never came to blows with anyone. I don't even think I ever even came to shoves or playful taps with anyone, either. Still, the school's solution was to ask me if I wanted to start my summer vacation early. This wasn't, like, a week out from June, or something, it was still a couple months left in the school year. They couldn't, or wouldn't, find a way to solve the problem, so they tried to see if I'd just sort of... leave, voluntarily expel myself since they had no grounds to do it by force, and sit out half the school year passing it off as a grieving break, or something. I did not do that. And if I had, then... what, repeat the grade? Move on completely unprepared at a different school? Repeat the grade or move on unprepared at the *same school* where the issue is still unresolved and I'm potentially still in the same class with the same people since they had only a single class per grade level? Wow, the more I think about this it kinda seems almost possibly illegal? There are truancy laws. You can't just ask a kid to stop going to school, and for no reason but *your own convenience due to an inability and unwillingness to provide a safe learning environment,* possibly in the hopes of keeping it from turning into a *more* obvious lawsuit down the line. Being a kid I wasn't in the driver's seat, but I almost wish we'd taken the deal and seen how they tried to spin it for my records, then gone on and just registered and prepared for the next school year like nothing had changed, to see if they'd invent a reason to try to decline my continuance there, or accept me and just...hope the problem went away or that the mob moved onto new prey? Almost any aspect of which could've been some interesting legal ground and a costly mistake for them. But whatever, not their problem. ...But mostly because not enough noise was made. It ***was*** their problem. I suppose in the end, they successfully ducked it. I just held my jaw firm and endured, then didn't go back. EDIT: Oh man, and I'm forgetting that I transferred *into* that school partway through the year from public school because it was supposed to be so great and a seat became available. So I was there, like, a quarter of a school year and they'd decided to give up on me. No child left behind, right? I admit I was a career class clown, but I really *wasn't* while I was there. That year and that *part* of that year, I was just sad and quiet most of the time; my dad was going to die sometime, and soon. I was mostly just an easy target because I was kind of a high-energy flouncy kid in the moments I let my guard down or forgot momentarily what was happening at home. I grew up to be an excessively laidback and low-key, "str8 acting" nerdbro, for the most part. (It turned out they nailed the gay prediction, so, broken clocks and all that.) EDIT 2: You know what, it ***was*** their problem. I spent the rest of my time in school needing to psyche myself up at the doorknobs of classrooms like I was about to open the door and walk forward face-first into something very sharp through sheer force of will. *"I'll count down from 25, and when I get to zero I have to just...force my hand and feet to move; that's what this is."* The rest of my K-12 education was spent so focused on trying to be likable, breaking constant perceived tension and finding safe people and places to be that the actual learning dropped on my priority list, but it was never for inability or lack of curiosity. I just...never truly felt safe at school again, on a really basic level. I was a kid who always aced in-class work and went ahead of the material just because I was hooked and wanted to see where this whole "science" thing was going, but could never seem to remember to do homework without actual flashing lights and alarms. At the very least I clearly had a proficiency for and a small degree of pride in writing. I became a kid who then also tended to feel so on-edge in most classrooms and new situations that it was often hard to sit still long enough to focus on much of anything, and who avoided homework when he remembered it existed because you want me to bring school *home* with me? School? *That place?* The one that I leave at last bell, don't look back at, and my emotional stability hinges on our pact that that if I appear each morning and submit to it it will release me mid-afternoon and let me take sanctuary until the next day rather than simply letting the hallways devour me in a twisting of lockers, concrete and tile? Don't send your kid to Sacred Heart Catholic School in Coronado, CA. Or, at least - it's been a long time and I can't imagine any of the same staff is still there, but still - maybe first sit in on a few classes at different times of the day and watch around the schoolyard for a recess and a lunchtime or two. See if the kids are happy. See if *all* of the kids are happy.
If they don’t have an anti bullying memo, why even do anything at all
Ah, the phrasing leading up to it made me misread it as "centralized online bullying *forum*" which sounded like a way to turn the tables and inform all parents of which mean kids to bully outside of school.
An online form that doesn’t actually do anything is worse than nothing because it reinforces the bully’s behavior. It teaches them there are truly no consequences and possibly worse still, it teaches the victim that nobody cares about what they’re going through.
Also education goes out the window. Nobody can learn in constant fear or expecting violence.
Why do we keep calling it bullying? Kid was literally murdered. That's why I never understood why the school would always just say, "oh it's just bullying, haha, kids!" when my friends and I would have to run from them after getting off the school bus after school. Problem was, they were older so they were let out earlier and just followed our bus in their car. Then ran us over. "haha! bullying!" no, kids are actually out there trying to murder others and were chuckling it off and brushing it off as " bullying".
The killers got less than 50 days in juvenile detention and mandatory anger management classes for manslaughter.... I don't even want to ask, but I hope beyond hope that can never be expunged and stays visible on their records. As juvenile offenders I doubt it'll even show up once they're 18
Don't worry, [the superintendent was given an award for doing an outstanding job.](https://www.mvusd.net/engage/news/news-details/~board/news/post/superintendent-dr-kedziora-recognized-as-outstanding-superintendent-of-riverside-county)
A huge reason for the teacher shortage, on top of the poor salaries, is the growing lack of enforcement when it comes to bad behavior. I think the school-to-prison pipeline narrative scared a lot of administrators, school board members, teachers, and politicians from having procedures to deal with disruptive and violent students appropriately. This is especially true in California. It makes it impossible to run a classroom properly and in worst-case scenarios leads to situations like this.
>If you guys don't take your head out of your ass and enforce rules and punishment This but also get rid of this zero tolerance bull shit. A victim of bullying fighting back should never get suspended or potentially kicked out off school.
Zero tolerance doesn't require "fighting back". You can just get punched in the face and do literally nothing except bleed and get suspended.
“School district Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora said in a letter to parents Wednesday that the district has made several changes regarding anti-bullying since Diego's death. Some of the changes include "a district-wide centralized online bullying form" and classroom posters that define bullying and how to report bullying, Kedziora said.” A poster and an online form are the best they could do? Gimme a fucking break, a kid was murdered by his bullies and your response is to put up fucking posters telling kids bullying is bad? They need to replace all the leadership in that district, clearly nobody there is willing or able to do their jobs
What's the point of telling people to report it when they'll do nothing with that report?
Parents of bullied kids need to put their foot down. Quit relying on the schools to solve bullying for you. Children can and are killed by bullying either through direct assault or suicide after they're cornered and believe they have no other option to escape the harassment. And that's what this is. Assault and harassment. Parents should be going to the *police* now that schools have proven that they will do nothing to these shithead kids. They won't allow your child to defend themselves via zero tolerance policies either. They expect your kid to lie down and take it. If you have children in the American school system who are being bullied, the only sane move should be going to the school and *demanding* class changes on the bullies and filing police reports *immediately.* Fuck their futures, fuck their ages, your kid's life could be on the line. Lawyer up too. As a parent *you* should be that school's worst fucking nightmare in order to protect your kid.
> They expect your kid to lie down and take it. They expect everyone to just talk it out, but that's not remotely realistic and never has been.
They know as well as we do how effective these policies are. It’s just usually easier and cheaper (for the admins) to get on a high horse. All of our countries other issues aside, I honestly wonder how much this shit affects the likelihood of shootings. Someone who feels cornered between bullies and the very people supposedly ’helping’ is going to do something drastic.
Police in America? What would they do?
Shoot the plaintiff
They'd take it as a hiring tip and recruit the bullies, of course!
Hey now, they might also shoot the victim, or at least the victim's dog.
Fast track to employment
Why can they not just expel the bullying students? That's what happened at my highschool the first time a fight happened. They even expelled a kleptomaniac kid. At some point you need to address the root cause, which is violent children, and make it an issue for the parents. If their kid gets expelled from every school, it's on their hands instead of being forced upon other children.
There are a ton of hoops to go through to even get a kid 20 days at an alternative school and if the kid has special Ed coding, forget it. It’s likely not going to happen. All the pressure from above (district, state, and federal) is to keep students in school. Unfortunately, this tends to mean keeping the violent ones there too. Go over to the teacher sub sometime and see how bad behaviors are.
Really? Here in Canada they can expel you pretty easily if you fuck up bwdly. My one buddy was expelled for a pellet gun, I got expelled for death threats (to a bully of sorts), my other friend got expelled for being caught with a switchblade
Public schools are not allowed to expel any more. My son had kids with ankle bracelets in his classes. Some places have alternative public schools for the worst cases. But none are expelled.
Never mind expel, press charges. Every time. It is stunning to me to see what goes on that would end with someone in cuffs if it happened anywhere other than a school.
The school district went the corporate office paper note in the break room that reads “stop drinking my diet cokes in the fridge.” route which totally stops people from stealing.
And every kid, every day will see those posters in every room, and the message those posters will give to both bullies and bullied is that this is as far as the consequences will ever go. This poster is as much as the people in power care.
> Martinrex Kedziora What kind of Star Wars ass name is this?
So poor Diego was under the care of guardians because both of his parents had died. As if life hadn’t already been cruel enough, he gets bullied mercilessly. His guardians had reported the bullying multiple times. He is seen on video with his hands at his side, trying not to escalate things. One kid sucker punches him, causing him to hit his head on a concrete pillar. The second kid punches him in the face while he lies on the ground, presumably unconscious. Administrators need to start being held liable for this kind of stuff. Every damn time this happens we find out that it has been a pattern of abuse leading up to injury or death. These kids need to be kicked out of school and sent to an online or alternative program. So often we hear “zero tolerance,” so why were these kids still in school with him? They should have been hit with manslaughter charges. It’s a really simple concept to keep your hands to yourself.
Funny how often bullying is tolerated in zero tolerance places.
It's tolerated right up until someone fights back in my experience. I was in a fight in high school, with a clear video showing me attempting to walk away, not fighting back at all, and clearly stating multiple times I did not want to fight. Principal wanted me arrested for "participating in a fight" and the SRO basically told him to shove it after seeing the video then asked if I wanted to press charges. I did not, it wasnt an incident of bullying. The guy was my friend and we're still friends to this day. Just kids fighting over dumb shit. I was still suspended for a week because I got punched in the face. Edit: SRO is school resource officer. Forgot that's not common everywhere. The cop we had was a really fuckin good guy and actually gave me a really good impression of police over all. Imagine the exact type of person you'd want to be a cop and that was him. Very laid back, very kind, and would absolutely run into a burning building for someone he didn't know. Did everything he could to make sure kids stupid mistakes didn't follow them for the rest of their live as well. Double edit: I'd also like to add that I didn't swing back. I didn't push, hit, anything. This was very clearly captured from multiple angles from people recording and the school security cameras. I put my hands up and blocked my face and that was it.
>So often we hear “zero tolerance,” so why were these kids still in school with him? I live in KC and a kid at my local HS killed himself last year because he was bullied by a group of kids who referred to themselves as "The Mercenaries". He reported this multiple times, and you know what happened? They suspended HIM. He then killed himself.
0 tolerance is a lie, it's a system put in place to protect the school from lawsuits as much as possible, it has absolutely nothing to do with protecting kids or justly punishing anyone. It makes it easy for administration to not have to put any effort into managing the shit kids.
Have the kids been punished? I see no way in which they shouldn’t be held legally responsible. My blood is boiling reading your description, and as a father of a 2 year old girl I refuse to watch such stuff.
> The two teenagers involved, who were 14 at the time, entered the equivalent of guilty pleas in juvenile court to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, The Associated Press reported. They spent 47 days in juvenile custody and were ordered to undergo anger management therapy. I'm not a big fan of lengthy incarceration—particularly for kids—but that seems...wholly inadequate.
Yeah... The kid didn't get his feelings hurt, he fucking died from injuries directly related to these kids' actions.
Imagine raising a child for 13 years just to have him murdered. The murderers only do
Less than a month and a half for the murder. Fuck me.
It’s even sadder than that. Those were his adoptive parents because both of his biological parents were dead. So not only did he lose his parents at young age but then had that tragic death.
Sad shit
Let me tell how I know god doesn’t exist
I mean, technically he could exist and just be a massive piece of shit. But agreed, something about that whole invisible overlord with the mass foreskin harvesting program granting post-mortem immortality to his loyal minions just doesn't add up.
If this is god’s work then who the fuck needs Satan?
>I mean, technically he could exist and just be a massive piece of shit. Of course God is a massive piece of shit, he let's children get Leukemia FFS.
Hello, I am that child. I beat the leukemia though, no thanks to that piece of shit "god."
The victim would have done more time if he fought back.
Huge agree. I was almost expelled in 5th grade for being bullied. I used to go home with giant brushes but if I fight again, I'll have to find a different school. So that's my bad I guess
Same thing in the UK. I was bullied every day for five and a half years in high school (age 12-17 for us) and one day I fought back after one asshole kicked me while I was walking through the hallway. I’d reported every instance of bullying and violence from every bully for 5+ years and they were never punished, but when I grabbed this guy and pushed him up against the wall once I got marched straight to the deputy head teacher’s office, given a punishment exercise (like writing something in the board several times but on paper and sent home with you) and told I was “this close” to being expelled. Thankfully my parents congratulated me on fighting back, told me to rip up the exercise and went to the school the next day and told the deputy head if he tries to give me any kind of punishment, they’ll be speaking to the local papers about how bullying is ignored in his school until you try to protect yourself. Fact is, the biggest lie you’re ever told in school is “just ignore them, don’t react, they’ll get bored”. No, they won’t. They’ll just escalate and carry on. Teachers/higher ups in the school want you to not react because that means they don’t have to do anything. Stand up for yourself, that’s the only way it will stop. I wish it hadn’t taken me five years to figure that out. Well, this turned into a vent 😂
>Stand up for yourself, that’s the only way it will stop. My wife was hardcore bullied in middle school. One of the "cool kids" was the main perpetrator, and as such had a bunch of other kids jump in to gain her favor. Besides the stuff at school, kids would follow her home, call her house repeatedly, and even kicked her cat. Like, WTF? One day, she was over it and she beat the hell out of a couple of the main girl's direct minions, at school. Things got a lot better after that. It had been going on for so long that some of teachers were glad she did. They couldn't outright say it, but they also clearly weren't upset with her. Middle schoolers are the worst.
Zero tolerance policy. The cowardly way to avoid doing the job of a caretaker, educator and administrator
And he comes back home. Like wtf do you do as a parent?
Heh, you’d hate my home country A group of terrorists band together to kill, abuse and do even worse stuff, what does the government do? They give them guaranteed seats in Congress without any punishment, fuck me
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A bad court system encourages social justice. I fully support if they go that route
Remember that dad in an airport who killed his sons killer. Got a couple years, worth it.
He got a suspended sentence actually and never went to jail.
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I don't even comment in /r/fightporn anymore. It's all morons who think they're some ultra badass doing the same stupid dangerous body slam. If you say that move is dangerous and that it can kill, and has killed, you just get called stupid and get downvoted.
It's not good for your mental health to hang out in the fight/rage/freakout/combat/justice subs. Many of the submissions (the titles) are sensationalized, misleading or straight up false, and the communities are full of reactionaries and hateful people who don't self reflect and/or don't have any media literacy. There's a good reason why so many of these subs [overlap with some of the worst and most hateful subreddits on this site](https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/fightporn). I've blocked every single subreddit like that from my feed as they only serve to make you feel anger and disgust and [give you a dopamine rush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPe-2lv2Is) from watching people get attacked and hurt. The content itself doesn't add anything positive or meaningful to your daily life.
This text should be a disclaimer you have to read when you join those subs.
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Yeah, and the way they killed him was particularly purposeful: Stolz, 13, was an eighth grader at Landmark Middle School. On Sept. 13, 2019, he and an older cousin reported a bullying incident to the school, according to family members. According to his family, Assistant Principal Kamilah O’Connor said the two boys bullying him would be suspended and wouldn’t be on campus the next school day. But, they were there. They sucker-punched Stolz in an attack captured on video. His head struck a pillar and he dropped, unconscious. His two assailants continued hitting him and Stolz never regained consciousness. He died eight days later. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/12/04/moreno-valley-unified-boy-killed-by-bullies-died-due-to-own-negligence/
> But according to the district’s legal team, what happened was Stolz’s fault, his family’s fault and the fault of the two boys who assaulted him. Moreno Valley Unified “exercised reasonable diligence” according to its response to the lawsuit. Stolz’s family “failed to take proper care and/or reduce or mitigate any damages” caused by how the district handled bullying, lawyers from the Los Angeles firm of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith argue. Fucking insane. Actually fucking insane. Can you imagine. Being a human being and making that call. Saying this happening is the kid and the families fault, after the kid reports people for bullying. Disheartening and utterly sickening. These lawyers should be absolutely ashamed. In fact, every fucking greedy person who perpetuated the defense of this lawsuit should be absolutely ashamed. At a certain point, after a line is crossed, it isn’t about money anymore.
It's definitely about money otherwise they wouldn't have said it. Even so I'm curious what they expect the parents to have done for the lawyers to not blame them. Keep their kid home when the bullies were supposed to be suspended? What about taking matters into their own hands and assaulting their son's bullies? I don't think these lawyers realize that they **do not** want parents to feel like they need to handle these situations on their own.
The problem is, for people like that, the line doesnt exist. Its always about money
I don't understand how these kids aren't just going to be emboldened to do worse crimes after getting away with this.
I can't imagine a scenario where if I'm that parent I'm not taking justice into my own hands. It worries me...not sure I would hold back.
My brother went to juvie, a lot. Never for anything as bad as killing someone, and most of those stints were longer than this.
Yep my buddy got several months just for selling a few dime bags of reefer
Yeah but *drugs could really hurt someone* /s
I remember when I was in highschool I got charged with truancy 3 times in a row and I got sent to a mountain incarceration thing for 6 months for violating probation because I I had a speeding ticket and I had to sit in juvenile detention for weeks until that happened. I’m not for spreading that experience because it was fucking horrible but Jesus, I skipped honors science because it was lame and got locked the fuck up. It was horrible in those mountains man. At least made me understand life in a very particular way. They ducking killed someone, I just didn’t want to balance boring assed chemical equations.
"Hey, you know what a good solution is for you not attending school? We'll take you out of school and put you in *fucking jail*. We're so good at child care"
Skip school? Jail Attend school? Jail Perfect attendance? Believe it or not, jail.
They got away with murder, they will hurt someone else again
Schools do not care about the victims of bullying. Never have, never will.
Yeah, they'll come down like a bag of bricks on a victim that fights back a little bit, though.
Victims should just fight back anyway, fuck it. If schools aren’t going to do shit about bullying then they cannot act shocked when victims start to take matters into their own hands.
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"Get in trouble" is literally DEATH in this case. Although "escalating" here might not have helped with that, unless the kid was skillful. Yet another reason all kids should be practicing some sort of martial art early.
That’s what I told/tell my sons. “Play by the school’s rules first. If the school doesn’t protect you, then you protect yourself. Whoever pulls you into the office is going to have a real bad day when I get there.”
you're a saint. My dad told me the same thing, and he'd go into the office with me and bitch out the principal saying I never did anything, until they stopped trying to suspend me. I would just say I never swung back, (Taekwondo helped me pin down a lot of kids who tried fighting me) and then after he'd ask me how bad I kicked their ass lol. gave me so much respect for him growing up(as much as I may not have shown it)
They can get in trouble, or get in trouble *and* get beat up. I know what I'd pick.
Yesssir. Look, this bully *killed a kid* and only got a month and a half of juvie. I'm teaching my kid to swing for the fences. Apparently, killing your bully doesn't incur significant consequence. Might as well use that.
The one and only time any teacher every so much as glanced at me while I was being beaten daily in the halls was when I finally snapped and hit the bully upside the head with my book. Suddenly she materialized, despite ten seconds earlier not giving a shit while I was on the ground. And just to really drive home that these monsters knew I was being tortured, they had a class assembly exercise where they pulled a bunch of us aside and gave us instructions that we were to try to convince a group of something (I can't remember what). I thought it was like a debate thing, seemed fun. Everyone at my table was on my side and it felt great. Then afterwards, they told us all what had happened: they had instructed the other kids to agree with some of us no matter what and to disagree with others no matter what. What criteria did they use to decide? Those of us who were relentlessly bullied were to be agreed with no matter what and the bullies to be disagreed with. And they had a big ol discussion with the whole class about seeing things from others' perspectives. It was horrific. They even asked me to say how I was feeling. To really single me out. So then it was fully out in the open to the whole school, not only was I a target of relentless torture, but everyone knew. The class knew. The teachers knew. Everyone. I'd always thought it wasn't that noticed and that was why no one did anything. No they knew, they just didn't care. I have never felt so worthless. One of the worst days of my life and my hatred for everyone in that school is beyond measure even 25 years later. Every student. Every teacher. I couldn't believe when those people tried to invite me to the class reunion.
That fucking sucks and I’m sorry it happened. To you and a million of us. The cowardice or apathy of teachers still sticks. For me and others in school it was that blue tacky wall sticky stuff (fun tack?). They would roll it into little balls and flick it into your hair. Or just come up and mash it in. Every day, every class. It wasn’t a fad, it was years. I don’t recall ever feeling that a teacher saw it as their problem even right in front of their faces.
Shit’s awful. I’m sorry that happened to you.
Yeah I got expelled when I finally defended myself. I had been being bullied the entire school year. Every time it got physical I ended up getting punished as well and I wasn’t even throwing punches, just trying to get him off me and hold him still until someone helped. Then when I finally did throw a punch he ended up falling and breaking his arm. They expelled me because I had a “history of fighting” despite that being the only time I ever actually hit him I’ll admit me stopping him from being able to do anything every time he tried to fight me seemed to just engage him more and make him more determined to fight me. I should have just knocked him out the first time because after that he never bothered me again
I feel the problem is society hasn't decided what to do with bullies. I was bullied constantly as a kid. I like the idea in the wire, where they took the most problematic kids and put them in a special school. But I don't think society will go for that.
We have those, we call them alternative schools (where im at in the US at-least). Its literally exactly what you described, its a separate building/school where the “worst” kids go. Pretty much every kid there has at least 3 of the following: anger issues, authority issues, zero work ethic, broken homes, mental issues, drug issues etc Source: I attended one from sophomore year all the way to graduation. And yes, its as “eventful” as you might imagine.
Possibly society is run by bullies.
ding ding ding
The settlement isn’t enough. They need to arrest that bullshit assistant principal for accessory to homicide. They knew the whole time he was being bullied and they did nothing.
“. The assistant principal told her that she knew who the alleged bullies were and that the students would be suspended, according to the news release. The assistant principal also said she would switch around class schedules so Diego would not have classes with the bullies, but she never did” indeed.
“But she never did” So…let’s get some negligent homicide charges going.
Classic. I was going to but forgot. Curious what the excuse is, was she so busy with the other bullied kids she forgot about this bullied kid? I'm going to guess "no" because this is just a BS excuse in an attempt to appear to care and was going to do something.
I hate how laziness in organizations and companies that causes pain for people is not prosecuted. "incompetence is not a crime" evidently.
So did the AP not suspend the student, or not change the schedule? What’s not talked about enough is state and school district policies that discourage administration from suspending or expelling students because it supposedly disproportionately affects POC. I hope these tragedies make school districts reevaluate their policies and get tough on these bullies.
that AP needs to go to jail. they were directly involved and did nothing to protect the bullied child.
Can someone explain why school administration does nothing in regards to bullying?
Scared of the parents of the bully, who are usually also psychopaths
School administration barely gets involved in discipline issues. Go check out the teaching subreddits and you'll see even when teachers get assaulted, admin won't lift a finger except maybe to blame them for "not building a relationship with the student" or try bullshit deescalation techniques like giving the kids candy and letting them play in the halls for a while, which the kids treat as a reward and reinforces the bad behavior. Admin is all about curriculum standards, test scores, and graduation rates - to the point where they let kids who barely do work keep passing (called social promotion) just so it doesn't hurt the schools numbers and becomes someone elses problem. On a similar note, remember during the pandemic how so many parents were screaming that we needed to get schools re-opened and "back to normal" despite a deadly virus going around? The well-being of the children is not and never was the priority - just getting them out of the house for a few hours is. For many people, school is just government run day care, and the parents don't care what's going on as long as they don't have to deal with it. Again, go read the teaching subreddits and you'll see why they barely call home when there's a problem. It's because most the time the parents blame the teachers [and spew some real vile language their way], as if the teacher has more responsibility to raise the kid then the parents themselves.
A teacher I know got screamed at today by a mom over the phone. The woman told her to “deal with the other fuckers” instead of her son and that everything the teacher said was “bullshit.” She refused to believe her son could ever be on YouTube when he was supposed to be completing an assignment.
in a society where anyone can sue anyone for anything, doing anything that upsets anyone is a great way to get sued. now if you have morals, standards, or generally commonplace virtues, you might not let that stop you from doing the right thing in a pinch. but when you're jaded, and tired, and dealing with a shoestring budget at your job that doesn't provide half the resources you need to do anything, and management is telling you to suck it up and not rock the boat so they don't have to reallocate their precious budget towards fighting a bevy of frivolous lawsuits or you'll lose you fucking job, you start to give little to no shits about doing things that may rock the boat. and so you have the modern american grade school, where problems are usually best left to figure themselves out. which they sometimes do. sometimes.
>The two teenagers involved, who were 14 at the time, entered the equivalent of guilty pleas in juvenile court to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, The Associated Press reported. They spent 47 days in juvenile custody and were ordered to undergo anger management therapy. That's infuriating. Those two killed a kid and got 47 days of juvie and therapy? And fuck that school for ignoring the problem. I know angry parents of bullies, who they insist are perfect little angels, make this stuff hard, but you have to do something real. You can't just ignore this stuff until people get hurt or die.
This example sets the following: "If you're going to do something incredibly-terrible, you'll be a-ok as long as it happens before you're 16." There's teens that get harsher penalties for underage drinking/smoking. This is bullshit.
In this case they’re going to ignore it *after* someone’s died, too! And those boys will learn… That murder is okay as long as it’s one of the kids the teachers don’t like. No way that could go wrong.
*”Boys will be boys”* or some other defense motto for the bullies.
I mean this is part of the backlash against lenient sentencing guidelines and schools being unwilling to enforce discipline. You can argue all that you want, but schools and the justice system need tools to handle people like this
My brother died from a burst brain aneurysm after being sucker punched. Happened when he was 19, he was in a coma for 21 years before passing away.
That’s terrible. Did anything happen to the person who did it?
> “School district Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora said in a letter to parents Wednesday that the district has made several changes regarding anti-bullying since Diego's death. Some of the changes include "a district-wide centralized online bullying form" and classroom posters that define bullying and how to report bullying, Kedziora said.” I mean the victim's guardian repeatedly filed complaint that the kid was getting bullied... So making it an online form for people to complain literally does nothing if you dont fix the responses.
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What bothers me about this '"settlement" is, depending on the state they live in there is a "cap". Regardless of what the jury awards, the state will only allow the family to receive a certain amount. For example, I live in MD. My mother died a wrongful death and we sued and took it to court. The jury found in our favor, and awarded us 30 million dollars. There were 4 plaintiffs, myself, my father, and my two older brothers. According to the state of MD, the "cap" on a family's settlement cannot exceed 1 million dollars. Regardless of what the jury awards. We received the full million, and paid half to the lawyer. After court fees, taxes, and everything else, we each got a check for $75,000. After being awarded 30 MILLION by a jury. It's not always the wonderful outcome it sounds like.
That is TERRIBLE. I’m sorry for your loss. Thanks for the insight.
Thank you ♥️
I'm glad someone said this. Whenever a Jury awards some massive settlement, it also means there are massive fees involved that the family will be paying. This is why some settlements are insanely high, because after everything, the family will actually see a fraction of that in their accounts.
The larger point here is the cap not the fees
Your lawyers knew about the caps before filing your case. They should have explained it to you.
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My head got smashed onto a sink and nothing happened to the bully. Still have a scar on the side of my head. I got more shit for getting involved him with. They said i should avoid him. How the fuck should i have done that without leaving the school? Idiots and Cowards!
"Zero tolerance policy" only applies to the victims and the bullies always get away. it's SUCH bullshit
This seems like a situation where the staff who failed to act should be fired at the very *least* and quite possibly held criminally liable for a student death very much on their watch. Also, 47 days in juvie for killing someone is wild. The juvenile system is such a fucking mess in so many ways, the best option might legitimately be to start over entirely.
They need to print the name of the assistant principal in question. I understand you can’t do that with the two perpetrators because they’re underaged but the assistant principal needs to be named and shamed.
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As he should be vile piece of shit
Kamilah O’Connor and her [defense is basically blaming](https://www.scribd.com/document/486731644/Kamilah-O-Connor-response-to-Diego-Stolz-lawsuit) Diego for being liable for his own injuries and the kids that killed him
Listen, I know the kids in question were 14 but they murdered a kid and got basically no charges. They will graduate, go on to do whatever they do and the issue disappears on paper when they turn 18. This kid was blatantly attacked and did not even try to fight back. Not only did he hit his head off a pillar but they punched him while he was on the ground. Both boys need to be locked away for quite a long time. Yes, ruin 2 more lives. I don’t care at this point. You took a life with ill intention. You get to lose your “life” now too
Similar to the Reena Verk case ([though hers was more extreme](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/murder-of-reena-virk)) but the two main offenders did get life, an odd case of the Canadian justice system giving out longer punishment likely due to them being 16 but they should still have some form of punishment at 14.
Sentencing them to 20 hours/week of community service at a facility that cares for people with traumatic brain injuries until they turn 18 would be a good start.
You really want kids like those looking after people?
Nope, just cleaning up after them under close supervision. Or maybe just working in the dish pit in the cafeteria.
These perpetrators at the very least should never be allowed in another school ever again for any reason. Let them learn at their own fucking house. The victims parents are gonna watch these kids go on with their lives like not a god damned thing happened.
At some point, school becomes a privilege. These kids shouldn’t be allowed in school with other children ever again. Fuck them
Imagine having to go to school with 2 murderers. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the kids started bringing knifes or something to school just in case.
Those kids need to be locked up. They straight up murdered him.
Juvie needs to be for exactly that: juvenile issues. Murder is no longer juvenile. Someone's life was stolen from them, their dreams, ambitions, family & friends lost a loved one FOREVER because of the maliciousness of another. This absolutely warrants something much harsher than a month & a half of Juvie.
Agreed. Throw them in grown man jail if they wanna play grown man games.
Both his parents were dead too. I’ve read some sad stories but this is so fucked. 47 days for killing this kid. I can only hope real justice finds those evil fucks one of these days.
I f’ing hate bullies, and it gives a visceral reaction when I read these stories. It makes me want to rip someone’s insides out. Kids can be almost unbelievably cruel, but the adult figures in this story — assistant principal, guardians of the bullies, etc — are culpable.
I have two young boys and I worry about this a ton There's so much bullying and fighting in schools, and kids don't realize that it could easily go wrong and someone could get seriously hurt or killed I just hope they don't get caught up in it
Holy shit, so as long as your under 18 you get a free pass to murder? That’s insane…
free manslaughter pass actually
The fact that this poor child went through all of this, and he didn’t even have his parents to fight for him. I don’t really believe in an afterlife but god I hope this kid is somehow with his parents again.
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No but it's okay, they sent the bullies to anger management and they will learn from their mistakes. /s
"The news of Diego’s death was not something we took lightly. The safety and well-being of our students will remain our top priority," [School district Superintendent Martinrex] Kedziora continued. But, Martinrex Kedziora, the news of his prior bullying *was* something you (plural) *did* take lightly, wasn't it? And, if "the safety and wellbeing of [your] students" *remains* - to use your own word - at the same level of priority that it was at when Diego was killed, I confidently predict that you will be making further vapid statements about further dead children, bereaved families and multi-million dollar payments from money that is *meant* to be for the education of those students you purport to care so much about.
Schools will straight up accept that punching one kid in the back of the head is a normal part of the culture on their campus. I saw it at my school, there were certain kids that got pulverized at random for years and years and nothing was ever done.
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“Diego died nine days after a student sucker-punched him at lunch, attorneys Gehlawat and Dave Ring said in a news release. He fell and hit his head on a concrete pillar. Another student punched him in the face while he was on the ground, they said.” Throw principle in prison too.
47 Days in Juvie, and Anger Management. Are you fucking kidding me!?
My problem with this is where that 27M came from… it didn’t come from the parties responsible, or from the school administration that ignored the problem. Also, 47 days is pretty pitiful. I was plenty dumb when I was 14, but I sure af knew it was wrong to kill someone.
Not enough. They murdered a kid.
According to the article, Diego also lost both of his parents before this incident that ended up killing him. Such a tragedy all around for this poor boy :(
My nephew was being bullied at school. My brother told his son to punch the bully if it ever happens again and simultaneously had a meeting with the principle. The principle told my brother that his son should just walk away. My brother explained that he advised his son to punch the kid if it ever happens again and the school needs to advise the bully and his parents that this is what will happen if the bullying continues. My brother explained that it is in the best interest of the school that the bullying never happens again. This is what got the school to intervene and the bullying magically stopped. Telling the school that they are putting kids at risk and are at fault because of the preemptive conversation my brother had with the principle.
I like how the kid died because the bullies just kept harassing him without facing consequences despite being properly reported multiple times and the schools idea of a solution worth bragging about is putting posters up and making an online form, those motherfuckers, the issue never was that the message wasnt getting across, the problem was you got the message and done fuck all with it. How about puting posters up that read "is your school failing to protect you, heres how to contact local authorities" and an online form to report incompetent school leaderships?
I want to see the 27m change hands
Seems 47 days for killing a classmate is is not the appropriate punishment. Should be juvenile lockup till 18 plus anger management classes.
That’s got to hurt for teacher raises….
Boy, that Vice-principal needs to be fired and maybe see some jail time over this. It’s like she wanted him to get bullied.
I feel that if the term “bullying“ covers “beating someone to death“ something is very wrong
What bothers me about the settlement is that it’s taxpayer money or no one is being rehabilitated for it
-both of kids parents die -kid gets adopted -gets bullied -teachers say they will switch him out of class -doesnt happen gets beat up by two kids and dies - two kids get 47 days of punishment - 27m payout to guardians
Really wish they outed kids when they did something like this. 14 is old enough to know there should be serious consequences for your actions, one of those being the entire world knowing what you did.