suspended for a school project

[sio]

you have a high-school aged daughter in a business and communications class. a video assignment "to create a persuasive promo or advertisement" is given and she chooses to create an anti-bullying message.

Comments

[snooji]

If the principal acts this way to someone apparently doing a good job in raising awareness about bullying, I wonder how they handle actual bullying.

[designingdreams]

This was my thought.

From what I've seen, perhaps the teen should've made the disclaimers more obvious/at the top of the Facebook page and beginning of the video. Even still, she didn't deserve a suspension for what is actually a very well done assignment that someone misinterpreted.

Isn't it a tad ironic that school officials are basically bullying her for her anti-bullying project?

[snooji]

Isn't it a tad ironic that school officials are basically bullying her for her anti-bullying project? Yeah, no kidding. Not to mention this is a school and a place for her to learn she should provide disclaimers and whatnot on the project itself.

[designingdreams]

She did provide disclaimers on the fake Facebook and the video,
But they weren't super obvious or up front. Apparently the parent who reported the Facebook didn't see her posts saying it was fake because they were further down on her wall.

[sio]

it clearly states "this is a fictional story about bullying" at the beginning and at the end--same thing before all the statistics. the whiner parent is blind if they didn't see that.

not to mention it had to have been found only one way by said parent--their kid came home and said something likely to the tune of "omg this girl at school made an awesome video for her communications class, check it out!" which should be a clue by four also.

[zinnea]

I don't even care that she had disclaimers. What if she really was a girl in crisis? Would they suspend her for the audacity to be a child in pain?

[sio]

probably because victims and their parents filing complaints and the media demanding they explain themselves for ignoring the suffering of kids inconveniences these lazy assholes.

[zinnea]

I'm just so thoroughly appalled by this that I think my brain is stuck on perma-boggle.

[designingdreams]

Yea, the video had a clear warning, but the 'warning' that the Facebook page was a fake was further down on the wall, behind a bunch of really mean bullying comments. I could see how a parent would have an immediate emotional response and not read the entire wall before calling the school.

I don't think it's that parent's fault for reporting- the school should've fully investigated the story before suspending her.

[designingdreams]

Also, it sounds like (from the TODAY interview) the mom who reported only saw the Facebook page, which didn't tell the story in the cheesy fake way the video did. The Facebook page appeared to be a real girl's page (with the picture being the student that created the project, but a fake name). The girl asked her friends from her OWN Facebook page to go to the fake page and leave mean comments. She had a Facebook status that said 'I just want to die' and her friends left comments that said things like 'go ahead', 'nobody would miss you' etc. I can totally see how that would make a parent feel they needed to do something quickly. At the VERY bottom of the wall, the girl had a status that just said,hey guys, this is really so-and-so. It didn't say 'all the statuses and comments are fake and intended to be for an anti-bullying project'.

I don't think the girl was wrong, but I do think she could've been a bit more clear on the Facebook page.

[sio]

true re: the FB page. though it's intersting that pretty much every article states the complainer called about the video--and also the principal told her the reason for suspension was the "video disrupted the school".

the fact that they also forced her to give them the login info for the Hailey profile and then deleted it (and are denying that) seems to be an afterthought.

[designingdreams]

Weird- on the Today show interview, she said she was called into the principal's office and shown printouts of the Facebook page, which the complaining parent had supposedly printed out and turned in to school officials. She said none of the printouts showed the disclaimer where she said it wasn't real.

[zinnea]

Ok, this is the part that I don't get. What was the complaining parent complaining about? And how does this tie to the school punishing her

[sio]

At this point I can't help but think there's something more sinister going on here.

you're not the only one, though mine was on a different vein.

after "WTF is this shit", my mind went "oh i'll bet a dollar the whiner parent has a bully brat. so they're calling to say it's 'offensive' and raising enough hell so that they focus on punishing Jessica for making it--and that way, this won't lead to the school giving her kudos and starting up an anti-bullying awareness campaign on campus--because their kid would be caught and nailed to the wall."

but then i'm cynical like that due to years of personal experience with lazy school administrators. not to mention all the (true) bullycide stories in the news just prove that point further.

[zinnea]

I hadn't considered that angle but now that you mention it, yeah, there's another possibility.

There's definitely something rotten going on there.

[orthent]

Isn't it a tad ironic that school officials are basically bullying her for her anti-bullying project?at all!