School Girl Roughed Up, Blame Her

News broke last week of an high schooler being thrown out of our seat in class by a law enforcement officer. Let’s get some of the facts out of the way. Her is a link to the story on NPR with an embedded YouTube video.

The high school girl is black. The officer in question is a white sheriff. Now let’s look at the few other facts. The girl was being disruptive and rude. She was on her cell phone and was asked repeatedly by several school officials before the sheriff showed up.

There are a number of heated discussion about this issue. Some say that had this been a white teenager, she would never have been tossed from her chair. That might be true, I might even go so far as to say, that is probably 80% likely to had a different outcome had it been a white student.

However, that is not all to be consider.

Let start at why this event even occurred. Had that student listened and not be disrupted to being with, this wouldn’t have been an issue. Sure, we all make mistakes, but we have to accept when we push that boundary too far. She might have had some legitimate reason for being upset and being on our phone. But we don’t get to be rude and disrupted because we have some personal problem. We have to also consider others around us. That student was being unfair to the other students and not only was she selfish, since she wasn’t even considering what is good for her.

I make no excuse for how she was handled. The sheriff should have not allowed his emotion, be it anger or irritation or anything else, to get in the way of treating someone with respect.

If I could, I would put that kid on some kind of punishment. Something severe, but not expulsion, to make a point that disrupted behavior will not be tolerated. She shouldn’t be expelled because that becomes someone else’s problem. We can’t shuffle kids around.

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