What about Tom's suspensions or detentions for fights or skirmishes in which he and his mother both said he was the victim and, at most, was simply fighting back? Gail Opalinski, director of middle school education for the district, testified that any student who "participated in an action" is subject to disciplinary measures. "It has worked in the past," Opalinski testified. "I believe that was an appropriate response." This is one of the many things that's screwed up about the school system today. The kid is bullied, he fights back, and he gets punished just like the instigator does. And the school *still* thinks that's an appropriate measure. Let the kids have the right to self-defense, and a lot of this stuff would go away.
Oh, yeah, this is typical. My nine-year-old son was set upon and beaten by a pack of ten- and eleven-year-old girls--young wolves of a different race, who saw him as a rich blonde boy from whom they could extort money and take out their racial resentments. He, being raised as a gentleman, mistook the rules and didn't raise a hand to them. And he was made to attend a "counselling session" at the school in which the hoodlums merely agreed that he did not owe them any money. They weren't expelled or suspended; "everybody had made mistakes," the idiot school principal said.
Far as I can see, the only mistake made was mine, in letting my child attend a school with young racist criminals. This is being changed.