He had a frickin flare gun in his locker FFS. He could have hurt someone with that.
Younger kids have been excluded from school for *much* MUCH less.
Brian was privileged to get away with only a detention, or maybe American high schools are much more permissive and easy-going than their UK equivalents.
Yes, I speak from personal experience. 😠 And, yes, I AM pissed-off.
Well don't go through life pissed off. Especially over a movie that came out 35 years ago.
shareMy life was destroyed because a cruel child decided to make a lie about me, presumably for fun, and when I tried to defend myself, I was drowned out by the mob, who chose instead to believe my false accuser. Thus, I had to get away, and I decided to sit on a window ledge. As a result, I was believed to be trying to commit suicide, and, thus, my life was destroyed.
I didn't harm anyone. I didn't threaten anyone. I didn't put anyone else's life at risk. I didn't even shout or use harsh language towards anyone. And I certainly wasn't carrying a weapon.
No, I needed time out from a torch-wielding mob, and, for that, I was canned DESPITE a hitherto EXEMPLARY academic (merit awards for highest performing student in my year term-on-term etc) and disciplinary record (NO detentions, NO suspensions). Like I say, Brian got off easy.
"when I tried to defend myself, I was drowned out by the mob, who chose instead to believe my false accuser. " In that case you wouldn't want to live in the USA in the 2020's.
shareI was only 14 FFS! And I wasn't accused of hitting or physically/sexually hurting anyone. I was falsely accused of saying I was better than everyone else, boys are better than girls, and I was better than one particular girl. None of which were things I even believed, let alone ever said to anyone. Heck, I hadn't even had many conversations with my accuser about things I actually *would* talk about. I had no beef with them, but they weren't on my radar. Now I'm wondering if they decided to take me down because they thought I'd ignored them or something.
shareThat is the culture of the USA today. If someone doesn't like you, they spread lies and enlist others. The lie becomes the truth. No one cares about facts.
shareI think social media has a lot to do with it.
On one hand, terrible things, like the type of abuse that got covered up in the 70s, 80s and 90s, are less likely to be kept a secret, which clearly is a good thing.
On the other hand, there is a lot more scope for people to start and spread false rumours, and that's clearly a very bad thing.
Hey Harvey,
I really feel sympathy for you.
There is NOTHING I hate more than people putting words in my mouth and the idiots believing them.
But do not give them the right to destroy your life.
DON'T LET THE BASTARDS GRIND YOU DOWN.
This was 1985. When I was in HS, we had a shooting club.
These days, we have second grade kids being suspended for eating their Pop Tart pastries into the shape of a gun and saying "bang bang".
And that's supposedly 'progress'... *sigh*
This is the thing with Cancel Culture (and before any misguidedly self-identifying 'progressive' lectures me and *wellsplains* to me that 'Cancel Culture doesn't exist', what do they call a CHILD being kicked out of school?!? 🤷♂️😠).
Speaking as an *actual* progressive liberal (you know, someone who cares about vulnerable people, like CHILDREN), intolerance is NOT progressive, and the whole Tolerance of Intolerance Paradox, although not *entirely* fatuous (i.e. Nazis/white supremacists), is grossly overstated and used as an offensive crutch to justify the self-righteous and sanctimonious bigotry of some people (i.e. "I'm not being intolerant. I'm being *righteous*" *sigh*).
Then again, this is an era in which I'm seeing some self-identifying 'leftists' on social media, champion the death penalty for some criminals... *sigh*
They seem to think classical liberalism (you know, opposition to the death penalty, the presumption of innocence, civil liberties under the rule of law) is *entirely* anathema to modern liberalism, or radical leftism. Hint: It's not; it's really not.
PS: I didn't intend for this thread to turn into an 'anti-woke' rant. If anything, I was hoping that fellow progressives would side with me in condemning the persecution of CHILDREN, but reading that kids are being suspended for eating their Pop Tarts as a gun, is really an indictment on what some people call 'progress', and I speak as a staunch opponent of private gun ownership/gun culture.
Also, as a leftist, it's worth bearing in mind that urban-based Black kids, particularly Black boys, are the people most likely to fall foul of particularly stringent and draconian rules and regulations concerning 'school discipline' and gun culture.
Perhaps, but back in 1985 there weren't school shootings happening every other month.
shareSo, destroy a YOUNG CHILD's life because of paranoia and hysteria?
Hmm, strikes me as very similar to the time of prejudiced, crappy-mindset we see from a lot of right-wing bigots who want to BAN Muslims and Mexicans from entering the US on account of a handful of terrorists and criminals.
What have you people got against CHILDREN FFS? Why are you so desperate to f*ck up a young person's life? What the f*ck happened to LIBERALISM? I thought WE were meant to be the caring, compassionate, empathetic, understanding ones. Did f*cking Columbine really mess our minds up the way 9/11 turned some idiots to the far-right?
I was a substitute teacher about 10 years ago and little boys would get in trouble for drawing "Army pictures" and guns. Some of the children would tattle. "He drew a picture of a gun".
I used to tell them not to worry. No one was ever shot with a piece of paper.
And don't get me started on the annual Halloween party for the kids at school. You could bring a costume to change into for the party. But your cowboy, soldier, etc., had better be unarmed! No toy six shooters allowed.
Sad how things have changed. When I was a kid, everyone had toy guns (I had this big plastic bazooka that would shoot a ball of air). Later in our early teens, everyone had a BB gun. We used to walk up the street with out weapons brazenly slung across our backs as we headed for the woods. Today there'd be a SWAT team after us.
A SWAT team? At the very least! My mom was a tomboy. She had dolls but she never played with them. She preferred her gun belt and six shooters. She loved cowboy movies and would pretend she was Gene Autry, her favorite cowboy.
Today, they'd call her "gender confused" and take her to a psychiatrist. (Are you comfortable as a female? )
This was a high school in a well-to-do white suburb, the kind of place where the parents can afford lawyers and aren't afraid to use them. Standards for being expelled are rather different than in an inner city school, in a prosperous white suburbs the parents of a dangerous asshole like Brian are gently told that their darling boy might benefit from counseling, rather than being told he's barred from the campus forever.
I went to a school like that, around the same era, and saw nothing done to the rich kids who were dealing drugs, experimenting with explosives, stealing cars for pranks, distilling alcohol in the chemistry classroom, etc., I saw the rich kids being forgiven serious crimes first hand. So I grew up to be an eat-the-rich Progressive, of course.
Thank you for your thoughts.
I despise double-standards.
I'm coming at things, not from the POV of someone who wants to destroy the rich (not that I remotely blame you whatsoever for feeling that way; believe me, I get it), but from the POV of someone who simply wants the poor and disadvantaged to have the same rights and opportunities as the rich.
Unlike the UK Tory Party, when I talk about levelling up, I actually mean it. I want the rights of the poor, the disabled, all women, all POC, all immigrants, and all members of the LGBTQ+ community to be 'levelled up'.
"... the POV someone who simply wants the poor and disadvantaged to have the same rights and opportunities as the rich."
I largely agree with you there, but not entirely. I believe in The Rule Of Law, and want both the rich and the poor to follow the law, and to be treated completely equally by the legal system, because that is what makes a society fair, just, and stable. But what we actually have is a system where the rich are functionally above the law and the poor are punished harshly for everything they do and even things they didn't do, and so things are unjust from the top to the bottom. I don't want everyone to be forgiven for crimes and injustices the way the rich are forgiven, I want everyone to face the same penalties for doing wrong!
But that's not how it works in real life, not in this country, and the unfairness and injustice starts in childhood. And is well established by high school age, because seriously. The year I graduated some kids stole a car and dumped it into the high school pool for a "senior prank", and all that happened was that the principal announced that this was costing the school a fortune and saying that if the perps were ever caught they'd be expelled. If they'd done that as a poor school some poor bastard would have been tried as an adult and sent to jail for decades, but these fucking spoiled sociopaths thought that grand theft and damaging public property was a "prank", and these are the guys who grew up to be CEOs.
I can honestly say that I've never committed a serious crime, certainly not an indictable one, in my life. I'm not even sure I've ever committed a crime. Period.
That said, I personally prefer a more liberal, even permissive, society, over one where we all have to keep watching over our shoulder for fear of being arrested or scolded.
Obviously, criminals who actually destroy other people's lives (e.g. serious sex offenders) need to be appropriately punished (e.g. in most cases, locked-up for a long time), but in most instances, I see little benefit to locking people up. NO ONE should benefit from crime. That's what really gets my goat. When 'crime pays' and people actually prosper from breaking the law. Anyone who does, should be forced to do restitution (i.e. financially/materially pay back to society). But I don't want to completely destroy another person's life on account of a crime that can theoretically be forgiven. I see no benefit in that, for anyone.
And the spoiled rich kids who dumped that car should have been forced to pay back the damage done (or their parents should have paid it back, and then billed their kid, once their kid got a job), but I wouldn't have favoured a complete expulsion. No one benefits from that. Not the individual, not the school, not other kids, and not society. It's just a waste for everyone.
I went to an inner-city public school. Population was 87 percent African-American. The popular black kids got away with everything. Everyone else did not.
Once you stop obsessing over skin color, life is much easier to figure out.
"privileged"
I'll be so glad when this infantile era in Western Civilization is over.
Yes, in this case he was, and before you say it, I didn't say anything about race. I'm also white, but I wasn't as privileged as Brian.
share"Race" aside, I find the word grating regardless of how it's used. It smacks of envy. I have almost nothing in this world. It's part the result of the unfortunate circumstances in which I was born, and part the result of horrifically stupid decisions I made in my youth. I could spend my life bemoaning what I don't have, but that would do nothing aside from wasting what little time I do have in this world.
Life is tough.
Oh well.
Yes, it's 'envy'. So what?
I'm not bemoaning the consequences of my choices as an adult. I'm bemoaning what happened to me and Brian respectively, when I was 14, and he was 16. I was held to a higher standard than Brian despite being younger than him, and despite having done nothing to potentially endanger other students/teachers.
the poindexter was not expel because he was given dispensations for his expertise and academics record
like prisoner getting release early for good behaviors.
being expel for flair gun make no sense. real gun yes. they see him as harmless nerd with flair all he do is destroy locker
I was top of my year and involved in several extracurricular activities when I was asked to leave school for sitting on a ledge. I didn't harm anyone, except potentially myself. Unfortunately, it was a Catholic school, and because my dad had lost his job, I was new to the school, which probably didn't help. Still, it annoys me that Brian got dispensations even though my academic record was as good as his (and unlike him, I wasn't failing woodwork, or whatever that course was).
shareyou should have sue school for unfair dimissals that does not sound fair.
i would expel brian if he had gun but flair gun i think is ground for warning for nerdlinger.
Instead of just cutting it off he kept hanging on
shareI think they all got off easy. Andy attacked someone for no real reason, that’s at least a suspension where I come from.
Bender pulled the fire alarm, which would mean the entire school had to evacuate, and 911 services would’ve shown up. And I’m sure it wasn’t a first offense in his case.
Both of those situations could’ve had potential legal action as well. In the film we see Bender get additional detentions by talking back to the principal. Doesn’t it seem odd that you get the same punishment for talking back as you do for assaulting a student, bringing a gun to school, or pulling the fire alarm? I think the writers wanted to give them interesting back stories. It would be boring if they were all there because they were late to class, or whatever lame reason people actually get detention for. But it doesn’t come off as realistic.
What Andy did was horrendous. It was arguably a form of sexual assault. It reminds me of something a boy did to me when I was only 11. Of course, suffice to say, the boy in question didn't even get a detention, to my recollection, far less a suspension or expulsion.
Different people, different rules, you see.
So, yeah, I'm still bitter and pissed-off. Some people will tell me 'Get over it.' Of course, if I were an elite celebrity, of a certain class/category, who'd experienced such abuse, or even LESSER abuse, as an ADULT, rather than a mere 11 year old CHILD who was SEXUALLY ASSAULTED, they'd no doubt be SIMPING over me. But hey, I was just a boy, so what did I matter, right folks? 😠