Bullied student faces expulsion, fired stun gun mom gave him

[imamaze]

Bullied student faces expulsion, fired stun gun mom gave him
Darnell "Dynasty" Young's classmates at Tech High School cursed at him in the school hallways and taunted him with homophobic slurs.
They followed him home from his bus stop and threatened to beat him up.
One night, as he walked home from his after-school job, they threw rocks at him.
When the 17-year-old and his mother, Chelisa Grimes, told school officials, she said, teachers and administrators seemed to blame Young for being openly gay.
More...

 

[daisy7]

A gay student who said he fired a stun gun in the air at school when bullies threatened him has been expelled, according to the school district.

Darnell “Dynasty” Young, a junior at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis, may return to school in the district on Jan. 7, 2013, Indianapolis Public Schools said Tuesday in an e-mail statement.

Young, 17, said bullies hounded him daily. The harassment escalated on April 16, when a group surrounded him at school and threatened to beat him up, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Young took the stun gun, which he had stashed in his backpack for a few weeks, and fired it off in the air. The students dispersed, but within minutes, school police had arrested Young.

"My point was not to hurt anybody … the purpose was to back them off. I didn’t know what else to do," he told msnbc's NewsNation on Monday.

(snip)

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...y-student-who-fired-stun-gun-is-expelled?lite

 

[JeannaT]

At what point, as a parent, do you counsel your child to try to fit in better? This isn't like a child who was being bullied for being Black, or having Cerebral Palsy or something that is not changeable. It's not even clear he's being bullied for being gay - are there other students at that school who are openly gay who are not, as they say "flambouyant" (whatever that means in his particular case)?

Before I'd send my child to school with a banned weapon, I'd send him to school wearing knee length canvas shorts, and a plain t-shirt and tell him to go learn the three Rs. We're in Indiana dear, when you graduate you can move to a more diverse liberal area and wear what you want and behave as you want, here, not so much.

BTW, he had carried the stun gun "for a few weeks" in his backpack and never had to use it to "back people off" before so it doesn't seem to me this was continuous. Weeks would go by when he didn't feel threatened.

 

[al66pine]

Was there better choice for the school and kid, besides expulsion? Hard to say.

If the school did not expel him for having & using prohibited weapon (tho nobody was harmed),
the next time another student there has a stun gun, taser, etc. and 'air-fires' then flails it around
and says - I just meant to scare ppl, not hurt anyone -
if a student is injured (ex, loses an eye & vision?) by that weapon,

injured student & parents' lawsuit will allege school historically tolerated students using weapons, etc. And they may dig up more incidents of weapon tolerance in that school, w. weak or no disciplinary action.

How cd. school respond to that ---
Yeah, but we only tolerated weapon carry & usage by some kids, not all. We did not expel that other kid for having a weapon, because he was being bullied by the other kids. And he did not mean to hurt anybody.

The newer article repeats an important point from the first link:
School admn. said --
--one time when a bully was identified, he was sent to principal's ofc & punished.
--other times, neither Dynasty nor other kids could identify the alleged bullies,
so the school cd. not take discipline the other alleged bullies.

Schools are between the rock & hard place, more so now than my school days when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

 

[LinasK]

At what point, as a parent, do you counsel your child to try to fit in better? This isn't like a child who was being bullied for being Black, or having Cerebral Palsy or something that is not changeable. It's not even clear he's being bullied for being gay - are there other students at that school who are openly gay who are not, as they say "flambouyant" (whatever that means in his particular case)?

Before I'd send my child to school with a banned weapon, I'd send him to school wearing knee length canvas shorts, and a plain t-shirt and tell him to go learn the three Rs. We're in Indiana dear, when you graduate you can move to a more diverse liberal area and wear what you want and behave as you want, here, not so much.

BTW, he had carried the stun gun "for a few weeks" in his backpack and never had to use it to "back people off" before so it doesn't seem to me this was continuous. Weeks would go by when he didn't feel threatened.

Ummm, sexual orientation is not changeable. Ask anyone who is gay and they will tell you they wish they had a choice.
Not saying I condone the stun gun, I don't- bad idea on the mother's part, but a gay student has an equal right to education as anyone else, black, CP, or otherwise. He is black too...

 

[justbeachy]

At what point, as a parent, do you counsel your child to try to fit in better? This isn't like a child who was being bullied for being Black, or having Cerebral Palsy or something that is not changeable. It's not even clear he's being bullied for being gay - are there other students at that school who are openly gay who are not, as they say "flambouyant" (whatever that means in his particular case)?

Before I'd send my child to school with a banned weapon, I'd send him to school wearing knee length canvas shorts, and a plain t-shirt and tell him to go learn the three Rs. We're in Indiana dear, when you graduate you can move to a more diverse liberal area and wear what you want and behave as you want, here, not so much.

BTW, he had carried the stun gun "for a few weeks" in his backpack and never had to use it to "back people off" before so it doesn't seem to me this was continuous. Weeks would go by when he didn't feel threatened.

BBM

Am I reading this correctly that you are of the opinion that being gay is changeable? Not trying to start a debate (we can do that in another area, I suppose), but I just wanted to see if I was reading your comment correctly.

 

[JeannaT]

BBM

Am I reading this correctly that you are of the opinion that being gay is changeable? Not trying to start a debate (we can do that in another area, I suppose), but I just wanted to see if I was reading your comment correctly.

No, I think being gay is completely hardwired into the brain. And I think eventually, science will evolve to where we can actually visually SEE sexual preference when looking at a human brain.

Being flamboyant doesn't really have anything to do with being gay - it's just kind of annoying behavior. Again, I don't know what the behaviors were that he was calling flamboyant, but judging from that white outfit with red boots, it seems he was purposely tweaking his nose at the conservatives in the school. Which is his choice, but at that point you have to realize you will be called names.

And his mother, who is much older and wiser, could help him through that as ALL mothers help their children when they see them ostracized. The first solution isn't to give a child a banned weapon - the first defense is to look at the child who's being singled out and see if there's something they might be able to do to get along better. We all do that as mothers. If you notice your kid runs funny, or has a weird way of eating, or says kind of weird things, or annoys other kids by sitting too close and talking in their faces, or acts like a sore loser, whatever it is, we tell them what to do to avoid being singled out for ridicule.

 

[justbeachy]

Gotcha. So his flamboyancy is the changeable thing vs him being gay. Now I see where you were going with that comment. I agree...that is changeable. Well, somewhat. I mean, his personality is his personality. If his mannerisms are flamboyant then there's probably not much he can do about that. When it comes to attire, though, that is a choice. In fact, that's somewhat of a life lesson. There are societal "norms" and if you choose to behave outside of those norms (via clothing, hairstyle, etc) then I think you should expect a certain amount of attention, be it negative or not.

Adolescence is hard no matter who you are. It is a parent's job to help kids navigate those difficult times and the stun gun was a poor decision. Sadly, now her son is probably being ridiculed even more.

 

[Tugela]

BBM

Am I reading this correctly that you are of the opinion that being gay is changeable? Not trying to start a debate (we can do that in another area, I suppose), but I just wanted to see if I was reading your comment correctly.

I think her point was when in Rome do as the romans do. If you are in a situation where you know that acting in a certain way is going to cause problems for you, then either get ready to face problems or don't behave that way. It's like walking down a dark alley in a bad part of town in the middle of the night - it might be your right to do so, but it isn't a smart thing to do, particularly if you can't defend yourself effectively.

That doesn't mean you have to change your orientation, but depending on the circumstances it might not be wise to flaunt it.

People do have control over these things.

 

[Donjeta]

Bullying is changeable, annoying behavior.

No one is genetically hardwired so that they simply must call other people names if they don't like the way they dress.

Just saying.

Bringing weapons to school isn't a good way to deal with things but when I was a bullied teenager I felt kind of resistant to the idea that I should have to change myself so that the evil bullies would accept me. If I had let them dictate what I should be like I would have given hateful people more power over me than would be good for me, imo. And who says that they would have accepted me anyway.