There are times I find it hard to remember witchhunts are bad. (RO - schools - poor logic on Loki's part)
Phoebe Prince died this January. She was a 15 year old girl, a freshman at South Hadley High School, in Western Massachusetts. She was a new girl - having started with the South Hadley school district that fall, having emigrated with her family from Ireland.
For whatever reason, and it seems to have been rooted in relationship drama, she ended up being stalked, harrassed, and hounded - with the administration doing nothing - until she hanged herself.
Today, the DA's office in that district has made the results of its investigation public: 9 teens have been charged with a myriad of offenses, including denial of civil rights, harrassment, stalking, and in some cases statutory rape. Six of the teens will be tried as adults, and three as minors.
At the time of her death, and as recently as a month ago, the School Superintendent was saying that no one in the administration knew what was going on. The DA's statement scotches that pretty effectively.
Quote:
“In reviewing this investigation, we’ve considered whether or not the actions or omissions to act by faculty, staff and administrators of the South Hadley public schools individually, or collectively, amounted to criminal behavior. In our opinion, it did not. Nevertheless, the actions or inactions of some adults at the school are troublesome.
That's right. We've got nine teenagers, who should have been being monitored, at least casually, who are now being charged for actions that took place, in part, on school grounds. We've got another girl dead.
And the total inaction by the school administration and most of the faculty?
Who gives a shit. That doesn't matter.
I bet, too, that none of the charged students come from "good families."
Obviously we're being told that school administrators have no power over anything that students in the school. So they can't be held accountable for their action or inaction for anything that the students do to each other.
Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck all the teachers who let this go, thinking that Phoebe should just suck up and deal. Fuck the administrators who met with Phoebe's mother on two different occasions while she tried to get the intolerable situation in the school dealt with. Fuck the School Superintendent who is so far out of reach from his schools that he thought no one had ever heard about this bullying, which was found to be common knowledge within the student body.
Finally, fuck the DA for finding all these statutes that will let her hang these nine kids for being allowed to run wild, while ignoring that the responsible adults who should have been monitoring and protecting instead stood by and fiddled, while those nine teens wrapped a noose around Phoebe's neck, one strand of hemp at a time.
Seriously, now: Denial of Civil Rights?!?!?!?! I would think that any possible interpretation of that should be equally applicable to any teacher or administrator that allowed these teens do this to Phoebe. No. I really do believe, now, that the fucking DA is going for the easy solution: She can hang the kids, because that won't really rock the boat. And - like I said - I'm sure none of the kids' parents are part of the middle or upper crust in the community. But if she went against any of the teachers, staff, or even the superintendent - that might have political consequences for her.
Fuck them all.
Knowing inaction by people who have a responsibility to monitor and control the behavior of others is just as damnable as the vile actions of those teens.
