It's kinda hard to change your skin colour. But it's pretty damn easy to stop taking an mlp lunchbox to school.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Serious Boy bullied over MLP bag, then the school bans him from bringing it
- Thread starter Daenym
- Start date
- Status
Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
What is that principal's brain composed of? Didn't he realize that he was actually somewhat standing on the bully's side?
Just how disruptive can a bag be? It's not even erotic or violent material.
MLP is constantly be stereotyped as a "gay" sort of choice, but there's nothing morally wrong with liking MLP.
Him bringing MLP bag to school will result in some sort of bully, I mean it's not surprising at all.
But you can't really say that he is wrong. It's just that he has a rarer type of preference.
I can remember the years when people who liked Pokemon were heavily bullied because of it, including myself.
However, to disallow him to bring the bag to school is just bizarre.
A school should be teaching kids that every single kid likes different things, and people with rare interests/ preferences are not being wrong, and they should accept people with different interests.
Just how disruptive can a bag be? It's not even erotic or violent material.
MLP is constantly be stereotyped as a "gay" sort of choice, but there's nothing morally wrong with liking MLP.
Him bringing MLP bag to school will result in some sort of bully, I mean it's not surprising at all.
But you can't really say that he is wrong. It's just that he has a rarer type of preference.
I can remember the years when people who liked Pokemon were heavily bullied because of it, including myself.
However, to disallow him to bring the bag to school is just bizarre.
A school should be teaching kids that every single kid likes different things, and people with rare interests/ preferences are not being wrong, and they should accept people with different interests.
Usually I don't post on these sort of threads, but this...this is just awful.
I'm not here to declare who is victim or not; rather, to just show how f***ed up this scenario is. This generation is nothing more than a brute mentality that will do whatever they want, whenever they want, and society has unfortunately caught on (no offense).
This school, instead of actually doing something about it like a school should, instead looked upon how society nowadays would do it...to get rid of anything that is different from them, to abolish the oddballs from the group, and almost even FORCE the "mainstream trends" onto the kid.
This is society everybody: a bunch of idiots who will bring even the hardest working down, will ridicule those who don't deserve it, and if you do not follow these rules or "guidelines?" Extreme punishment and a shallow future. Thanks...makes me feel real happy as a human fucking being. (no offense intended)
I'm not here to declare who is victim or not; rather, to just show how f***ed up this scenario is. This generation is nothing more than a brute mentality that will do whatever they want, whenever they want, and society has unfortunately caught on (no offense).
This school, instead of actually doing something about it like a school should, instead looked upon how society nowadays would do it...to get rid of anything that is different from them, to abolish the oddballs from the group, and almost even FORCE the "mainstream trends" onto the kid.
This is society everybody: a bunch of idiots who will bring even the hardest working down, will ridicule those who don't deserve it, and if you do not follow these rules or "guidelines?" Extreme punishment and a shallow future. Thanks...makes me feel real happy as a human fucking being. (no offense intended)
Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
They are just molding everyone into the same thing, and you can't stand up for your odd interests anymore.
They are not taking appropriate action to stop the bullies. So they are going to think that he asked for the bullies.
who is blaming the kid? who are these people saying "it's his fault or that he deserved it"? they told him not to bring it in a (possible futile) attempt to stop the bullying. now someone said he was getting bullied before this, and they're also probably right that he could still get bullied after it (altho sounds like he changed schools? idk) so maybe it's not going to work but like what other solution do you propose.
everyone is so disgusted that this elementary school isn't doing anything to punish the bullies (even though i've read they are and also the school cannot comment on the situation so really we're only getting 1 side to this anyway) but i think you guys should step back. you're an administrator of an elementary school. among the other constant shit you have to deal with (you're responsible for hundreds of kid's personal safety) you find out a bunch of kids have been bullying 1 kid because he brings a MLP bag to school. what is your solution that attempts to keep this kid safe while also keeping in mind that everyone involved is only in 4th grade, so the punishments can't be too extreme. i'm just lost at what easy solution you guys have for this that isn't going to cause problems. you 100% cannot expel the 5+ kids who are bullying, like that is just not how it works. you can't force them to go to another school. you can force them to apologize and give them a short suspension but is that really going to deter 4th graders if they see that bag again? no, probably not. so you give them a suspension and then tell the kid who was bullied that he can't bring that bag in anymore for his own safety and move on with the other jobs you have as the administrator of this school.
apparently that means we're siding with the bullies or limiting creativity and freedom. the actual truth is the school cannot and will not monitor 1 child for his entire schooling to make sure no one ever bullies him again and this is just an attempt at stopping the bullying. crux, if you really think you can reason with 4th graders then good luck, but outside of the classroom they probably dismissed or forgot what you said already. there is so much misguided anger at the school here when the reality is their hands are tied and they took a pretty solid option. i mean hell the school isn't even being deranged and giving the kid any suspension for bringing the bag in or saying he cant bring it other places, just that inside the school they're responsible for his safety and they're just trying to prevent the kid from getting hurt.
blitzlefan
shake it off!
To be honest, I think a lot of you are looking WAY too far into this. The school's actions weren't an attempt to stifle all creativity forever and ever or force kids into accepting society's "standards". What is the school expected to do? The MLP bag is the reason the kid was being bullied, so given that they're dealing with fourth graders, the easiest way to keep the kid safe is to remove the bag from the equation.
Think about it: what would you do in the situation?
There's really no way to punish fourth graders outside of contacting parents or a short suspension. They're not blaming the kid, they're doing what's in the kid's best interests in the most effective way possible.
Think about it: what would you do in the situation?
There's really no way to punish fourth graders outside of contacting parents or a short suspension. They're not blaming the kid, they're doing what's in the kid's best interests in the most effective way possible.
BenTheDemon
Banned deucer.
But why should you have to? Giving in to bullies should be a very low priority.
Then suggesting not to bring it rather than outright banning it sounds ideal, no?
Seems a bit stronger than your average bullying, too - punching and pushing someone to the ground? That goes beyond "name calling," that's physical abuse and is honestly still illegal. Yes, I understand that they are kids and naturally they can't be expected to be tried by law or anything due to their age and [probable, people really underestimate kids, I find] lack of cognizance of the possible consequences of the situation, but I'm pretty sure this goes beyond the stuff that virtually every kid goes through in some way, shape, or form when they're in school, and would likewise need more keen monitoring because of it. They outright banned him from doing so, which probably means he will be given disciplinary actions from the higher-ups if he does indeed bring it, correct?
"You should consider not bringing it" vs "You cannot bring this" are two very different things. Considering not bringing it is looking out for his safety; outright banning it would, at least if I were a bully, affirm my actions as "right" in my own mind due to even my teachers agreeing with me. That may not be the way it'd actually be, but I'd probably see it that way.
That said, I did indeed jump the gun for that; it's a sensitive topic for me, similar things happened to me in younger years for similar reasons, and I do apologize - however, that doesn't make it acceptable. That said, we do have no idea what did and did not happen to them, and for that, I did overreact.
Lol, I don't know what school you went to, but physical abuse and tormenting sounds pretty average to me for bullying. Not every kid goes through physical abuse, but it doesn't make it out of the ordinary. It all depends on the area.
I completely disagree. When you're looking out for the safety of a child, it doesn't matter if it seems like you're "taking sides". If there's a known cause for the bullying, then you want to eliminate it. As a teacher, I'd rather tell this kid that he can't bring in his bag than harshly punish every single kid that makes fun of him or bullies him for it (which would be a lot, because I know that if I were in that school and I saw a kid with that bag, I would have bullied him too). Everyone wants to stick up for the little guy, but as kd said, you can't watch every single child 24/7. Instead, you go for a medium. You reprimand the kids for bullying in the form of a suspension, and you eliminate the problem at its source, in order to avoid more conflict.
I live in Canada. Maybe that makes it self-explanatory.
That implies that it'd just magically end with the banning of the bag, though, which is unlikely - honestly, do you think it'd end just because the "source" was eliminated? Not likely; the cat's out of the bag [hurrdurr]. He'd already been a weirdo, now he's ousted as a "freak," and I'd honestly imagine that they wouldn't let him live it down; I know I probably wouldn't, particularly if, again, I was seemingly positively acknowledged by the teacher for my cause, and only punished for my methods - so I'd pick different methods.
Also, if you would've bullied him too, isn't it more or less a good idea to tackle that problem at the source? Giving the kids a stern wakeup call might not always help, but it's sure as hell better than doing absolutely nothing in that regard.
I know how kids are, and a boy bringing something "girly" to school will definitely get him picked on but seriously? People can like what they like boy/girl it doesn't matter. Sure they could've suggested to him to maybe keep the bag at home for a bit and see if things die down but never allowing him to bring it to school again? They gave the bullies the satisfaction of having that bag removed from Grayson and it wasn't fair at all. Hopefully after all the death threats and hate mail the school committee,principle, whoever gets they will smarten up and allow the kid to bring that backpack to school. Also sort of off topic but that backpack is one of the most amazing backpacks Iv'e ever seen. c:
On the one hand, bullying is bad and it shouldn't be put on MLP kid to bring a different backpack to school. On the other, welcome to real life, where if you deviate ever so slightly someone will make fun of you for it. Fact is, you're going to have someone who thinks less of you if you decide to do something your own way. Either way, if you look at extra articles Daenym provided, it appears as though Grayson was actually being bullied BEFORE this bag was dragged into things, the bag is more of a catalyst than anything else.
Also, this isn't any sort of a new thing. Schoolyards are breeding grounds for this sort of stuff. Hell, I got teased for Pokemon and Beyblades when I was a kid (not to mention anime when I got a bit older), quite a few others got flak for Yu Gi Oh (spelling?). That stuff got banned from our school too, people moved on because no one gave a shit back then.
Now the issue is that EVERYONE KNOWS THIS KID BECAUSE THEY MADE A HUGE FUCKING DEAL OUT OF IT. He can't change schools, anyone who keeps up with this stuff knows him as Pony Boy now. He's got no choice but to get home-schooled if he doesn't want to deal with the problem anymore.
Also, this isn't any sort of a new thing. Schoolyards are breeding grounds for this sort of stuff. Hell, I got teased for Pokemon and Beyblades when I was a kid (not to mention anime when I got a bit older), quite a few others got flak for Yu Gi Oh (spelling?). That stuff got banned from our school too, people moved on because no one gave a shit back then.
Now the issue is that EVERYONE KNOWS THIS KID BECAUSE THEY MADE A HUGE FUCKING DEAL OUT OF IT. He can't change schools, anyone who keeps up with this stuff knows him as Pony Boy now. He's got no choice but to get home-schooled if he doesn't want to deal with the problem anymore.
i wasnt gonna say anything in this thread but man i saw this post and jesus fucking christ
youre a real tough guy arent you pal, maybe this 9 year old needs to emulate your hard-as-nails lead
i am like 90% sure he is mocking the guy in this post: http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...ns-him-from-bringing-it.3502548/#post-5319430
cuz i don't see how 2 separate posts that mention white supremacy somehow made it into this thread by coincidence, also the language he's using in that post clearly indicated a trolling tone to me, so yeah i think you're just getting trolled z__z
You do realize it is highly illegal for death threats? Also, what fourth grader watches "mature tv shows and trys... Fit in the crowd"? I am pretty sure that nobody particularly tries to; it's just that nobody stand out at that age. Please tell me you can find something better than "we did it" and "don't have a good sense of empathy at that age".
Blame the lunchbox IMO(or not). I have a friend of a friend who watches MLP; sure we make fun of him, but we don't tell him to go home and die. That is a very serious thing to say and can severely harm his feelings. What does them being punished have to do with anything?
tl;dr: Why did the principal do it?(to respond to this, please don't repost any of already mentioned stuff)
mattj
blatant Nintendo fanboy
Right or wrong the Supreme Court recently ruled that a school could forbid students from wearing shirts with american flags on them so a lunch box doesn't have much hope of legal protection. When I was in highschool I wore a shirt to our small school expressing my outrage at people who had bullied a friend who had just been killed and was told I must change it. It ticked me off at the time but now that I'm older I can see that it was the right decision in order to not make a bad situation worse.
Really?
U.S. flag codes aren't actually punitively enforced, but it's pretty clear that flags get "special treatment" as compared to lunch boxes.U.S. flag codes said:
edit: rofl okay
Last edited:
The thing that bugs me about the whole thing is that banning the lunchbag sends a message to the kid that the bullies were in the right and that a boy shouldn't be bringing an MLP bag to school. From the boy's perspective, he brought something to school that he liked, got teased and bullied by his peers, and was told that he couldn't bring it to school anymore because it was disruptive. From the administration's point of view, it seems like they wanted to nip the problem in the bud so that they didn't have to deal with the problem in the future, because if they allowed the student to continue bringing the lunchbag they'd have to deal with the kid and his parent(s) in their office continually for being teased and bullied and be forced to bring punitive action against the bullies if it escalated (which I guess it's kind of hard to escalate from death threats but there it is).
What should have happened is that the kid's teacher and the administration should have brought him and the accused bullies down to their office and discussed why the kid was bringing the lunchbag to school, what made the bullies uncomfortable about the lunchbag, how the kid felt about being bullied, and finally told that bullying is wrong and especially so are death threats (having a police liaison for the latter can really get that message across especially for elementary age students).
4th graders aren't below the cognitive abilities to understand that what they say and do can have very negative consequences on their targets.
Banning the MLP bag was a good way to eliminate the problem at its surface and protect the kid from harm in an immediate fashion, but it fails to deal with the problem at its core, which is that the kid is being bullied for bringing something to school that he enjoyed.
And please, keep the "bullying is inevitable" arguments out of this thread, as someone that was going to be a teacher and has been in a multitude of school environments and actually wrote a research paper on bullying and racism in schools, that is so fallacious I can't even handle it. It's actually very easy to create a non-bullying environment if the administration and teaching staff as a whole makes an effort to eliminate it on school grounds. Having teachers and administrators roam the halls, do the strategies I described above, creating class cultures of safety and openness, and providing safe areas within the school are all extremely easy and surprisingly effective ways to cut down the amount of bullying that occurs in a school. It's hard to cut into a culture where bullying is pervasive, there's no denying that, but it's not impossible to work on it from the ground up, particularly at the elementary age (ie. starting in Kindergarten and continuing from there).
What should have happened is that the kid's teacher and the administration should have brought him and the accused bullies down to their office and discussed why the kid was bringing the lunchbag to school, what made the bullies uncomfortable about the lunchbag, how the kid felt about being bullied, and finally told that bullying is wrong and especially so are death threats (having a police liaison for the latter can really get that message across especially for elementary age students).
4th graders aren't below the cognitive abilities to understand that what they say and do can have very negative consequences on their targets.
Banning the MLP bag was a good way to eliminate the problem at its surface and protect the kid from harm in an immediate fashion, but it fails to deal with the problem at its core, which is that the kid is being bullied for bringing something to school that he enjoyed.
And please, keep the "bullying is inevitable" arguments out of this thread, as someone that was going to be a teacher and has been in a multitude of school environments and actually wrote a research paper on bullying and racism in schools, that is so fallacious I can't even handle it. It's actually very easy to create a non-bullying environment if the administration and teaching staff as a whole makes an effort to eliminate it on school grounds. Having teachers and administrators roam the halls, do the strategies I described above, creating class cultures of safety and openness, and providing safe areas within the school are all extremely easy and surprisingly effective ways to cut down the amount of bullying that occurs in a school. It's hard to cut into a culture where bullying is pervasive, there's no denying that, but it's not impossible to work on it from the ground up, particularly at the elementary age (ie. starting in Kindergarten and continuing from there).
mattj
blatant Nintendo fanboy
Oh. No no. It had nothing to do with flag codes. It was because the school officials were afraid it would tick off the latin american students at their school.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/27/justice/california-school-american-flag-shirts/
I don't quit understand where the bullying actually came from. When I was 9 I'd never even heard of someone being "gay". Well, I had a frog which would sing that "I feel pretty" song which talks about gay people but that was the gay meaning "happy". Anyway, I highly doubt that the kid was being bullied for being a homo, I'm going to assume it's because the cartoon was actually just childish, but that in itself is highly unlikely because they're 9 year olds. They're not going to be watching soaps or reality TV, they're supposed to be watching childish shit.. maybe MLP was just one step too far? I don't know...
According to one of the articles the kid was bullied before he ever brought the lunch box to school, so in essence the lunch box didn't set it off at all. Also the school not being able to disclose any more information about his "learning situation" kinda makes me think the victim would have been disabled somehow? I don't know if this is just me, but I'm just confused about why Grayson got bullied at all. Obviously, it could have just been that one of the bullies was told to hit Grayson as a dare and he reacted incredibly badly, so the bullies thought it was a lot of fun and there was actually no particular reason. That's honestly the likeliest option to me right now.
If the kid was being bullied before-hand then it's absolutely in his right to be able to take the MLP lunchbox to school. Maybe the bullying worsened, but as a 9 year old being bullied you would probably think it couldn't get any worse. However, I would be willing to bet that it was actually Grayson's mother who bought the lunchbox for him, and he had no choice other than to bring it to school, so personally I think it was probably just negligent parenting there. While I guess I feel bad for him, Grayson's case is really nothing special and I don't see why it hit the news. If anything, the media just escalated the situation even more, as now his bullying is global which is incredibly embarrassing for someone. Honestly it would have happened like this:
1) Grayson bullied. Teachers do nothing about it.
2) Grayson's mother buys Grayson MLP lunchbox. Grayson has no choice than to bring it into school.
3) Grayson gets bullied a little bit worse because of this lunchbox. Grayson didn't want to tell his parents that he was getting bullied out of shame, so had no choice other than to continue bringing the luncbox to school.
4) Now that there was a "motive" the principle made Grayson get rid of the lunchbox in a bid to help him. The principle is a complete idiot and didn't realize it would make the bullies win.
5) Because the case is slightly unique thanks to there being a MLP luncbox, the media hit the case and put Grayson to shame in front of millions.
Order of blame in damage done:
1) The Media
2) His mother
3) The principle
4) The bullies
According to one of the articles the kid was bullied before he ever brought the lunch box to school, so in essence the lunch box didn't set it off at all. Also the school not being able to disclose any more information about his "learning situation" kinda makes me think the victim would have been disabled somehow? I don't know if this is just me, but I'm just confused about why Grayson got bullied at all. Obviously, it could have just been that one of the bullies was told to hit Grayson as a dare and he reacted incredibly badly, so the bullies thought it was a lot of fun and there was actually no particular reason. That's honestly the likeliest option to me right now.
If the kid was being bullied before-hand then it's absolutely in his right to be able to take the MLP lunchbox to school. Maybe the bullying worsened, but as a 9 year old being bullied you would probably think it couldn't get any worse. However, I would be willing to bet that it was actually Grayson's mother who bought the lunchbox for him, and he had no choice other than to bring it to school, so personally I think it was probably just negligent parenting there. While I guess I feel bad for him, Grayson's case is really nothing special and I don't see why it hit the news. If anything, the media just escalated the situation even more, as now his bullying is global which is incredibly embarrassing for someone. Honestly it would have happened like this:
1) Grayson bullied. Teachers do nothing about it.
2) Grayson's mother buys Grayson MLP lunchbox. Grayson has no choice than to bring it into school.
3) Grayson gets bullied a little bit worse because of this lunchbox. Grayson didn't want to tell his parents that he was getting bullied out of shame, so had no choice other than to continue bringing the luncbox to school.
4) Now that there was a "motive" the principle made Grayson get rid of the lunchbox in a bid to help him. The principle is a complete idiot and didn't realize it would make the bullies win.
5) Because the case is slightly unique thanks to there being a MLP luncbox, the media hit the case and put Grayson to shame in front of millions.
Order of blame in damage done:
1) The Media
2) His mother
3) The principle
4) The bullies
- Status