Was bullying and sexual assualt rampant at the Colorado school?
CNN reports:
Five months before Tuesday’s fatal shooting at a Colorado charter school, a district official urged the school’s administration to investigate allegations of violence, sexual assault and campus bullying that an anonymous parent feared could lead to “a repeat of Columbine,” according to a school district letter obtained by CNN.
Nutty parent who happened to be right in the way that a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day? Or a clued-in prescient parent?
I still assign this shooting to the category of LGBT-rage.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like “sexual assault” are weasel words that I find annoying. It sounds like it means rape, but in truth almost never means that. Is towel snapping in the boys’ locker room sexual assault? When you were making out with a girl in high school and started trying to grope her until she picked up your hand and put it on her shoulder (without any pause in the making out) — was that sexual assault?
I think the term should be banished and people should instead say what they mean.
Wency
May 10, 2019 at 9:49 AM
I doubt that the woman is referring to the traditional meaning of rape.
Lion of the Blogosphere
May 10, 2019 at 10:27 AM
Rape in traditional meaning is pure emotional exaggeration that does not even exist, except in special cases like wars.
My 2¢
May 10, 2019 at 12:54 PM
The classical meaning of rape is abduction, not forced sexual intercourse. My hobby is reading books about Indians, especially Eastern Woodland Indians, before they lost it and got put on reservations or were lost through interbreeding/assimilation. Indians abducted women during raids but never raped them in our sense of the word. Yet, there is stll confusion about this because contemporary accounts are full of references to rape, but in every case I would imagine they meant abduction.
Not trying to make Indians into something like magical negroes, the Indians had serious faults like gruesome torture of their captives. Just trying to rescue an old meaning of a scary word.
Nice
May 10, 2019 at 8:19 PM
Nowadays, sexual harassment is defined as saying something vaguely sexual that makes someone feel uncomfortable.
By that standard, I committed sexual harassment when I was in high school. And I got away with it. I wrote the following piece about it. Read it you dare.
Some of the language is a little explicit, but not gratuitously so. As always, I’m painfully long-winded.
…
We talk a lot about bullies … anyone want to admit to doing any bullying?
I never shoved anyone into a locker, but … I did say some nasty things about people. I wasn’t anywhere near the top of the social hierarchy, but I wasn’t at the absolute bottom, and I used to make fun of some of the kids who were. At the very least, I didn’t stop other people from saying and doing nasty things.
There was one girl in special-ed who was strangely … exuberant. I’ll call her S.
S. didn’t have Down’s syndrome, but she looked and acted a lot like Rosie O’Donnell in this movie. She even had a similar voice:
One day, I was standing in the outdoor area near the cafeteria, eating my daily slice of pizza, when a guy I knew came up to me. I’ll call him G1, for Guy 1.
“You wanna see something disgusting?” G1 asked.
“Not really,” I said. “But I guess you can show me.”
“Come on,” he said. “It’s really sick.”
I followed him into the cafeteria.
A little background: My public school was a real oddity. The building was fifty years old and insanely overcrowded, but it was in an upper-middle-class area, so there was a weird mix of “poor kids” who rode the bus and “rich kids” who drove brand-new Dodge Vipers to school. (The teachers’ parking lot was the one filled with beat-up wrecks.)
The poor kids shuffled through the dregs of special-ed; the rich kids glided above the fray in the ultra-competitive AP classes. I was somewhere in the middle, and I knew people from both worlds. I took several AP classes, all in the humanities. (Again, I’ve always been an innumerate wordsmith.) I was a smart fat loner nerd, and my wealthy grandmother always bought me lots of nice (large-sized) clothes, so I had a reputation as a wannabe preppie.
I never thought of myself as privileged. But I was floored by something that happened when one day, I was talking to a poor (but relatively smart) acquaintance and happened to describe a mutual enemy as a “snotty rich kid.”
He shot me a hostile look and said, “You know, you’re always complaining about the ‘snotty rich kids’ who prance around in the latest overpriced crap from Abercrombie & FItch, but what the hell do you think *you* are? Some of the clothes you wear are pretty fucking expensive. And that house you live in is pretty fucking big.”
When I objected that it was not my mother’s house, but my grandmother’s, he said, “Whatever. But you were telling me the other day about your trip to Boston. ‘Oh, the plane was delayed four hours and we had a hard time getting to the hotel.’ Big fucking deal. You told me once that you’ve been on dozens of planes in your lifetime, and stayed in dozens of hotels. Well, I’ve never been on a single plane, and I’ve never stayed in a single hotel.”
He gave me a long, hard stare, and then he said, “You call me a friend, but I don’t think of you as a friend. I don’t even like you. You’re a spoiled brat. You’ve always been given everything that you’ve ever wanted. And you don’t even appreciate it. You don’t even see it.”
I objected that I didn’t even have a car. He responded: “Neither does my mother. She has to ride the bus to work.”
Then he continued. “You bring a laptop to school every day. You have a brand-new desktop at home. You’ve told me that your mother has something like seven computers in the house and expensive electronics equipment lying all over the place. I don’t even own a computer. So don’t tell me that you’re not a snotty rich kid.”
Then he walked away. He never talked to me again.
Of course, on a relative level, I was, indeed, deprived compared to many of my ostensible peers. My daily lunch budget was $2. There were kids at the school who thought nothing of spending $20 on delivery.
(When we were juniors, only the seniors could go out for lunch. We were the first class of seniors who were not allowed to leave campus. This was but one of the many post-Columbine reforms that affected millennials who attended high school in the early 2000s.)
Every day, I bought a slice of pizza ($1.50) from one of the lunch carts scattered around the open-air campus. (In addition to the carts, there were several roach coaches parked in the back, near the basketball courts.) Then I bought a can of Pepsi (50 cents) from one of the vending machines clustered near the entrance to the library wing.
On most days, I scarfed down the pizza and wolfed down the Pepsi during the short walk to the library. (My stomach always churned as I walked down the hallway. The weight room was nearby, so that entire wing smelled like a rotten jockstrap.) Then I sat down at a desk, pulled out my Sony VAIO laptop, and listened to music while studying.
Forgive the digression, but I have fond memories of that VAIO. Grandma bought it for me at the beginning of my junior year. I’d had a desktop since I was a little kid – my mother bought a new system every year and gave me the older model as a birthday present, starting with her 386 – but I’d never had a portable machine. Grandma picked a Sony model because it was the only brand name she recognized. That machine took a lot of hard knocks over the next couple of years. When it finally died, halfway through my freshman year of college, most of the keys were falling off.
(I started bawling when the hard drive failed – I’d just finished writing a 20-page essay. Fortunately, a classmate was able to retrieve it.)
Back to the cafeteria (and S., the ostensible subject of this part of the essay): The cafeteria was small and somewhat dingy. Like most of the school, it reeked of that late-’50s industrial vibe. Most of the kids who ate there did so only because they qualified for free or reduced-price lunch.
S. always brought her own lunch to school. And she always ate in the cafeteria. It was always crowded, but somehow she always found a table where she could sit alone.
G1 – remember him? – pointed to her.
“She just got out of the bathroom,” he said. “She didn’t wash her hands. [A girl] told me that she never washes her hands.”
“So what?” I asked.
“Watch,” he said.
S. retrieved a brown paper bag from her backpack. She set it on the table. Then she got up and walked over to the condiments table in the middle of the room. She grabbed two packets of mustard and two packets of ketchup. She walked back over to her table and sat down.
“Am I missing something?” I asked.
“Just keep watching,” he said.
She took a sandwich out of her bag and unwrapped it. The contents looked like bologna and American cheese.
Someone else we knew came up to us. I’ll call him G2 (for Guy 2).
“What’s going on?” G2 asked.
“I’m showing [Stan] how S. eats her lunch,” G1 said.
G2 laughed. “Oh, yeah, she’s a fuckin’ freak.”
S. ripped open the packets of mustard and ketchup and quickly poured them on top of the bologna. She then squeezed the packets violently, as if she were a demented maniac trying to wring the last little bit of toothpaste out of the bottle. One or two kids looked over at her as if she were insane, but no one said anything to her.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“You tell me,” G1 said.
Then S. extended the palm of her hand and pressed it down hard on the sandwich. She began smearing the ketchup and mustard all over the bologna. Again, her actions were violent. She was applying way too much force.
I recoiled a little. When I was growing up, my mother never allowed me to touch sandwich meat with my fingers. She always insisted that I use a knife to spread my condiments. And the idea of putting ketchup and mustard on bologna was more than a little weird.
“That’s … interesting,” I said.
“Keep watching,” G1 said.
S. smeared her sandwich for a good thirty seconds before finally stopping. Then she lifted up her palm and, right in the middle of the crowded cafeteria, began licking her hand. She extended her tongue and gingerly scooped every square inch of ketchup-mixed-with-mustard off of her palms and fingers. The “handwash” lasted at least a minute, perhaps longer. When she was done, she wiped her saliva-soaked hands off on her shirt. For good measure, she picked up the slice of bologna and gave it a nice, long lick before she put it back and began eating the sandwich.
I was on the verge of wretching. Again, I was taught at an early age that a) you never touch food with your fingers, and b) you never put your fingers in your mouth. One time I tasted a piece of Duncan Hines brownie mix before putting the tin in the oven. My mother saw me, and she freaked out. She immediately tossed the tin in the garbage and subjected me to a fifteen-minute screaming match.
G1 and G2 were both laughing hysterically. I was too disgusted to laugh, but I giggled nervously.
“Jesus,” I muttered with genuine contempt. “That’s fucking disgusting.”
Through the guffaws, G1 was able to say something: “Just remember that she never washes her hands. Not after she takes a shit. Not after she fingers herself in the bathroom.”
“She fingers herself in the fucking bathroom?” I asked.
G2 stopped laughing long enough to chime in. “Oh, yeah. One time, [two girls we knew] were in there, and they were listening to her, and she was moaning like a fucking hyena. And then, when she was getting out of the stall, they saw her licking her fingers.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
“It’s true,” G1 said. “I once saw her licking her fingers as she was coming out of the bathroom. That bitch is fucking crazy, man. She is one fucked-up piece of shit.”
I shook my head, horrible images of this girl’s deviant behavior filling my head.
“Jesus. Why did you have to show me this fucking shit?” I said.
G1 and G2 were still laughing. I was shaking my head in continuing disbelief.
Then, suddenly, for whatever reason, S. suddenly looked up, and saw the three of us staring at her like she was some strange kind of insect.
G1 and G2 immediately tried (and failed) to stop laughing. I lifted up my hand and gave her a little wave. I flashed the biggest, fakest smile that I could manage, and yelled, “Hey, S.! Hope you’re enjoying your sandwich!”
S. looked down at the sandwich, then looked back up at us, then got up and bolted from the cafeteria. As she zoomed past us, I could see that she was starting to cry.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I hope we don’t get in trouble.”
“We’re not going to get in fucking trouble,” G1 said. “All you did was tell her you hoped she was enjoying her lunch.”
“I hope not,” I said.
A little later, I was sitting in class when a special-ed teacher came into the room and whispered in my teacher’s ear.
“[Stan], Mrs. U. wants to talk to you,” my teacher said.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered to myself.
The special-ed teacher and I walked out into the hallway.
As soon as the door closed, Mrs. U. said, “Well, do you want to tell me what happened?”
“What happened…”
“What happened with you and S.”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t really involved. It was mostly G1 and G2.”
“It was you, too.”
“I was just standing there. They were the ones who were talking about her.”
“There was another student who was listening to the conversation,” Mrs. U. said. (When I heard this, I suddenly tensed up. I had no idea anyone else had been listening.) “She said all three of you were talking about how she was touching herself in the bathroom.”
“That’s what G2 said. But I didn’t…”
“She said all three of you were laughing.”
“They were laughing harder than I was.”
“But you were laughing, too.”
“A little. But mostly because I was just so … disgusted. You have to admit that it’s pretty disgusting.”
Mrs. U. sighed. “S. has problems. You know that.”
“I know, but…”
“…but she’s just trying to eat her lunch, and the three of you are standing around in the cafeteria, making all of these nasty comments about her and laughing at her and making her feel like dirt. Did you know that she had to go home early?”
“No, but…”
“…but she was so upset that she came into my room in the middle of my class and started crying uncontrollably. I had to take her into an empty room to try to get her to calm down. And she wouldn’t stop crying until we finally agreed to let her go home for the day. She was so upset that she couldn’t even go back to the cafeteria to get her bag. I had to go in there and get it for her.”
Honestly, I wasn’t too sympathetic. But I put on the best “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry” face that I could manage.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. U.”
“I’m not the one you should be saying ‘sorry’ to.”
“I know. Am I in trouble?”
Mrs. U. sighed.
“You never get in trouble for anything, do you?” she asked. “You always know how to talk your way out of it.”
“I wasn’t lying when I said that G1 and G2 were doing most of the talking.”
“And I’m sure they appreciate the fact that you’re throwing them under the bus. No, [Stan], you’re not in trouble. But I expect you to apologize to S. tomorrow. I’m going to ask her if you’ve apologized to her, and if she tells me that you haven’t, then I will find you, and then you really will be in trouble.”
“I know. I really am sorry, Mrs. U.”
“Again, I’m not the one who needs to hear that. You’d better apologize to her tomorrow. I mean it.”
“I will.”
I did apologize to S. the next day. She thanked me and that was the end of it.
But G1 and G2 and the girls who watched her in the bathroom continued to make fun of her all through the end of the year. Every now and then I would hang out with them at lunch and we would try to come up with new and interesting insults. Sometimes I just sat back and listened; sometimes I added a nasty crack of my own. It felt really good to find someone who was such a freak that even a fat weirdo like me could make fun of her with impunity.
So, yeah, I wasn’t Biff Tannen, but I wasn’t a saint, either.
There were times when people made nasty comments about me, and I just went with it. I pretended that it didn’t bother me, that I was in on the joke. But I wasn’t. I should have had more empathy for the kids who were getting it every day. But I didn’t.
One time, in German class, I started joking around and crossed the line into sexual harassment. When the teacher left the room, I humiliated a girl in front of the entire class by making crude comments.
Mr. GT (German Teacher) was showing us some slides (physical, not digital – this was in the early 2000s) of scenes of German life. He was speaking entirely in German. Everyone was trying to keep up with his rapid-fire delivery.
Suddenly an assistant principal came into the room and whispered in his ear. Breaking back into English, he said, “I’ll be right back. Eine Minute.” The two adults stepped into the hallway and closed the door.
At that moment, the slide on the screen was a photograph of an Oktoberfest celebration. A family of blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan types was enjoying the festivities. The father and the mother were drinking big mugs of beer. Their little girl and baby boy were looking on. The boy was looking up at his mother with a weird expression on his face.
“You know,” I said, “that boy is asking, ‘Where the fuck my beer at, bitch?'”
A few people laughed.
Suddenly, the girl spoke up. “That’s you as a baby, isn’t it?” she asked. We were on good terms, and occasionally we teased one another.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “And you know how much I love my beer. I’m a real bitch until I get my first mug of the day.”
Again, a few people laughed.
“You’re a bad boy,” she said.
“You know I am,” I said.
If I had stopped there, everything would have been fine. But then I kept on going.
“I’m a very bad boy,” I said. “So … you wanna spank me, baby?”
I looked over at the girl. Suddenly she looked uncomfortable. But I didn’t stop. God knows what I was thinking (or if I was thinking), but I kept right on going.
“You wanna spank me, bitch?”
She looked positively mortified. Again, I didn’t stop.
“Yeah, you know you wanna spank me. I’ve been a very bad boy. You wanna spank me till my ass is red. And we all know you get off on that shit.”
Again, I don’t know what ever possessed me to say that – it just popped into my head and then, before I knew it, it started coming out of my mouth.
I looked around the room, and was somewhat surprised that people weren’t laughing. A few people giggled nervously, but most of the students looked shocked that I would have the gall to say something like that in front of everyone.
The girl looked dazed, as if I’d whacked her in the head with a two-by-four. She didn’t meet my gaze.
I looked over at the guy sitting next to me. He wasn’t a friend – I was a fat nerd and he was a jock – but we shared a few classes and were on decent terms with one another. He was smiling, but he was also shaking his head and mouthing, “Oh, my God.”
Then, suddenly, Mr. GT walked back into the room.
“What’s happening, folks?” he asked.
Ever the smug prick, I piped up: “Oh, we’re just practicing our German, Mr. GT.”
A few people, including the jock, stifled a few more nervous giggles. I could swear that I heard someone whisper, “Oh, my God, he did not just fucking say that.”
I caught a quick glimpse of the girl’s face. She looked as if I’d just stabbed her in the stomach.
The teacher gave me a “Well, aren’t you quite the class clown?” look, then walked over to his desk and began ruffling through his briefcase.
The girl raised her hand, but the teacher didn’t see her. Finally, she began to speak: “Mr. GT…”
“Mr. GT,” I interrupted, “we were just admiring the picture you have on the projector.”
“It’s from Oktoberfest,” Mr. GT said.
“Mr. GT…” the girl said.
Again, I interrupted her. “She was wondering if you took it yourself.”
“No, it’s from a book,” Mr. GT said.
“Mr. GT!” the girl shouted. No one else made a sound. They knew it was between me and her, and they didn’t want to get involved.
“Which book?” I asked, again rudely interrupting her.
Mr. GT looked over at the girl, then at me. He said the name of the book. I don’t remember what it was.
“Mr. GT!” the girl said, looking very exasperated.
“Is the weather nice in Bavaria in October?” I asked, cutting her off yet again.
Through the corner of my eye, I could see that the girl was royally pissed.
“You know, I don’t think she’s very happy with you interrupting her,” the teacher said.
“She’s not happy with me at all. I said something to her that I shouldn’t have said,” I replied.
Suddenly, the girl looked over at me with a hopeful air, as if she thought that I might have the decency to come clean and admit that I’d done something wrong.
Then I smirked and added, “I can’t help myself. I’m just so excited about learning German that I get carried away sometimes. My enthusiasm for the subject is overpowering my better judgment.”
The girl shot me a look of absolute disgust and buried her head behind her German book.
The teacher laughed at my smug little joke, and resumed his lesson.
After class was over, the girl got up and walked up to the teacher’s desk. I got up, too, and I stood right next to her. I gave her a long, hard stare. Honestly, I was trying to send her a message: “What you gonna do about it, bitch?” She looked at me, and she took a few deep breaths, and then she stormed out of the room.
The teacher didn’t mention anything to me. I asked him a question about our homework assignment.
As I walked out of the classroom, I was thinking, “I’m getting away with it so far. But she’s probably going to tell another teacher or an assistant principal or something, and then I’ll get in trouble.”
But no one ever mentioned the incident again. As far as I know, no one ever spoke up in her defense.
The only consequence was that the girl, who formerly had been on semi-friendly terms with me, avoided me like the plague for the rest of the semester. She never looked me in the face again.
But a few years later, I ran into her at the mall. As soon as she saw me, she said, “Hey, [Stan], want me to give you a fucking blowjob?” I was pretty flustered, so I stammered, “Uh…” Suddenly she laughed and said, “That was worth it just so I could see the look on your face.” Then she turned and began walking quickly in the opposite direction, flashing me her middle finger as she went. So I assumed that she didn’t have any lingering hard feelings about it.
Maybe she didn’t say anything because she believed (probably correctly) that the teacher wouldn’t have done anything to punish me. Honestly, teachers always sided with me. I didn’t get in many disputes with other students, but, when I did, the teachers always gave me the benefit of the doubt. They always liked me. And it wasn’t because I was a popular “cool kid” who could get away with anything – I wasn’t. It was because was a very good student. I always had my hand up, and I always tried to come up with something intelligent to add to the discussion. Indeed, there were times when a teacher had to ask me *not* to participate so the other kids could have a chance to speak. And I always went out of my way to suck up to authority figures. I was very good at it.
Teachers always did nice things for me. One teacher once nominated me for an award for making a Web site. She was on the committee that handed out the award, and she made sure I got it. I made the crappiest Web site – all of the text was in 12-point Times New Roman – in the history of the Internet, and I got an award for it. The award even came with a little trophy. I went downtown to pick it up at a special ceremony.
(Of course, my teacher’s motives weren’t entirely altruistic. She got credit for being the teacher of the Web-design class, and the school got some recognition, as well.)
As a senior, I missed about forty days of class, because I just didn’t give a shit. But I still graduated in the top ten percent of my class. My teachers bent over backwards to make sure I got credit for all of my assignments. And not one but two teachers nominated me for special senior awards. I got to go to a banquet at a fancy hotel and everything.
So, yeah, I didn’t have any real friends, but I wasn’t at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Sucking up to the teachers gave me an extra edge. And I wasn’t always a nice guy, either.
In general, I tried not to cause any problems. But more than once I got away with doing things that other kids would not have gotten away with.
Stan Adams
May 12, 2019 at 6:21 AM
The school claims they investigated and found the charges to be without merit, and went so far as to file a defamation lawsuit against the parent a few months ago. That in itself seems weird.
Richard
May 10, 2019 at 10:36 AM
“The school claims they investigated and found the charges to be without merit”
Yes, there is not enough information to know if the school is justified or if they are lying.
Lion of the Blogosphere
May 10, 2019 at 11:14 AM
According to the data on greatschools, this school is 75% white and less than 10% NAM. 93% non-poverty rate. Interestingly it is majority male, only 30% of the students are girls. I’m going to guess that the high school grades have an even greater male/ female disparity.
Reading between the lines of the article the ‘parent’ making the allegations may actually have been one of the students and the school went to so far as to file a defamation lawsuit against her. (I’m assuming they’re using jane doe because she is a minor.)
toomanymice
May 10, 2019 at 1:23 PM
The parent wrote that “many students are suicidal and violent in school.”
This is something that should be followed up on.
gothamette
May 10, 2019 at 6:43 PM
“(I’m assuming they’re using jane doe because she is a minor.)”
They are using jane doe because they don’t know who she is. The lawsuit strikes me as an extremely bad idea.
James B. Shearer
May 11, 2019 at 12:03 AM
“I still assign this shooting to the category of LGBT-rage.”
Now that’s a phrase you’ll never hear the msm use!
destructure
May 10, 2019 at 2:17 PM
violence at the STEM school?
violence? for real?
I understand bullying doesn’t have to be physical to be abusive, but it is a real stretch to envision a white/asian STEM school that is violent.
alice
May 10, 2019 at 4:43 PM
Cyberbullying? Of course. Real, physical, “classic” bullying? I don’t buy it, because to do the latter the kids would have to look away from their screens for at least a few seconds. They’re all looking at their screens all the time.
Fable of a Failed Race
May 10, 2019 at 7:03 PM
“The father of one of the alleged STEM School Highlands Ranch shooters in Colorado is a serial felon and illegal immigrant from Mexico. Jose Evis Quintana, the father of alleged 16-year-old killer Alec McKinney was once jailed for 15 months for domestic violence against Alec’s mother and ‘menacing with a weapon’.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7012485/amp/Father-Colorado-school-shooter-Alec-McKinney-serial-felon-illegal-immigrant.html
destructure
May 12, 2019 at 8:20 PM