>>What shocks me is that the adults did NOTHING! <<
When adults step up, things go much better. Mercer Island schools are better than Kent schools because there is more parental involvement. I know. I attended both districts in my Jr High and Sr High years. There was no comparison. An ARMY of involved adults don’t let the school district get away with crap.
I’ve been to public music events in Mercer Island and in Kent. In Mercer Island, you see people drinking wine out of Baccarat crystal wine glasses, unmolested by cops occasionally walking through the crowd, and when the event ends there is NO garbage. Everyone cleans up after themselves.
In Kent, if you try to drink a Bud out of a brown paper bag, the cops are on you. And the park tends to be a bit more trashed after the event.
It is all about the general public response to bad behavior in a particular community. The people in Mercer Island can do what they do because they have proven that they can handle it with no ill effects. In Kent, when it is allowed, it can become a bit of a problem and their can be altercations, etc.
The less virtuous a people, the greater the need for laws.
BTW, I’ve experienced the anecdotal events above. Yes, there are lots of responsible adults in Kent, but the general “responsibility level” of crowds there is lower than Mercer Island. Sorry. It just is. And for the record, I now live in neither place.
If there was an expectation, by the girls, that the other people would get involved, they never would have done what they did. And if I had been that guy in the gray sweatshirt on the left, as soon as Jessica stepped back after asking for her MP3 player back, I would have stepped in the space she had just occupied and seriously ramped it up verbally. I would have looked at those girls, pulled out my phone, and said that if they don’ give it back immedeately, I was calling the police. Like Patrick Swayze said in “Point Breaki”, you intimidate immediately to prevent the other side from entertaining the possibility of striking back. And you give them a nice, clear, binary option: Give it back and forget it ever happened, or the police are gonna meet you when you get off the bus.
Oh, and I’ve done this before. I was the last call on David’s show on KTTH last night. I DID get into a swarm of Asian high school boys beating and kicking the sh!! out of another kid in broad dailight in the international district of Seattle while lots of people just watched. It was me and a taxi driver. The bullies didn’t know how to handle us, but they did not strike out. They were kinda shocked and left.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)
We all have to do our part when the opportunity presents itself, and let the chips fall where they may.
A great truth that needs repeating ...
No doubt the parents in Kent wish that they could be parents on Mercer Is. Of course the difference is a
couple hundred more thou per year, and few of the
denizens of Kent make that kind of nut.
Good advice and good job