Love it 
. Seriously, that is the right response.
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Well, your willingness to push back against what youāve been told to do by your employer is commendable, as is your readiness to defend capricious enforcement of school procedure. Iām pretty sure I wouldnāt have the presence of mind or purity of heart to do it in the heat of the moment.
In your scenario I would like to hear you explain to the Laotian girls who didnāt wear the jewelry their grandmothers passed down to them (because they were obeying rules theyād been told in advance) why their classmate who bought a kente online the week before got to violate the same rule.[quote=āStrawBoss, post:204, topic:78756ā]
Hereās the whole story: Kid acts like a little snot- school over reacts.
[/quote]
I donāt think thatās quite fair either.
I donāt think Holmes overreacted or is āsnot-schooledā. I do think he knew heād be called on his kente and wanted to push the system. He should get a pass because this kind of pushing the system is a right of passage for a kid his age. That doesnāt mean he didnāt behave badly, it just isnāt that serious. Fortunately, he wasnāt actually arrested, he wasnāt prevented from graduating, he still had a good HS education, heās still heading off to a good college. The punishment for his willful behavior is commensurate with the violation. All this outrage is just the amplifying effect of the internet.
For all that I disagree with some of your arguments, itās a pleasure to watch someone who can intelligently defend your viewpoint without resorting to the supercilious ad hominems and vaguely racist infantilizing weāve seen in this thread.
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A fact that you apparently arenāt able to demonstrate in any way.
It was āKid acts like a little snot HYPHEN SPACE school over reacts.ā Honestly, Iām not 100% sure thatās the proper way to punctuate that kind of sentence.
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If you lack all hope in the intelligence of people who disagree with you, then why did you engage in the debate to begin with?
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Shits and giggles. Make myself feel smart.
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I hope your life is full of richness.
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Liked for at least owning it.
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What she said.
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This kid broke and refused to comply with the rules, and then got kicked out. There is no news story here. Dress codes are a thing, and not a racist-homophobic-sexist thing at that. Everyone is equal, everyone dresses the same way, no exceptions
Itās really not that hard to understand
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"Iām so sorry. I wish Iād known about your grandmotherās jewelry sooner so I could have given youāand your classmatesāthe opportunity to share your cultural heritage with us on a day for which you and your family must be tremendously and justifiably proud. I canāt undo what those bureaucratic pinheads told you, but that doesnāt lessen the sting of what you must be feeling right now. Again, Iām sorry. Hereās whatās going to happen: your classmateās refusal to obey that stupid rule helped end that stupid rule. Iāve abolished it, effective immediately. Nyree also demonstrated one person can make a difference. Sometimes that involves standing up for things you think are important, and that includes disobeying stupid rules and ignoring the bureaucrats quoting them. We need people to help move us forward, and clearly we have a lot of work to do, so Iām going to ask students from this class to help us write new guidelines for graduation ceremonies and Iād like you to be part of that, if you have time this summer. I can write a special letter to your college admission board, if that would help. Let me know. Sincerely, Principal M_Dub.
p.s. The next time a bureaucratic pinhead tries to enforce a rule you think is stupid or unfair, donāt be so quick to obey it. People make history and can change the world by doing exactly that. Nyree did it. Question authority."
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Nice try, troll.
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You mean āCory?ā
So, are you disappointed in Boing Boing?
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Thanks. Iām not God, Iām not always right, and if Iām interested in convincing someone of something Iām not going to succeed by yelling at them or trying to argue purely by snark.
The older I get the more I see everyone in situations like these as people, not symbols, and the more I try to find an explanation which assumes the best, not the worst, of them. It doesnāt always work, but the internet habit of dehumanizing everything by reducing it to a clash of symbols or ideologies always doesnāt work.
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The first thing to do is: āwhatās the charge?ā
The second thing to do is checkbox ājury trialā. Always chose jury trial. Never plead out, never plead guilty (face palm), and god never unless you are a complete idiot or a cop, chose bench trial.
The third thing to do, is never use a public defender. Represent yourself. And go on the offensive. You never win any fight by going on the defensive. Always: offensive.
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And thus laxity becomes the official policy when enforcing the rulesāany rules, because a kid canāt be counted on to be making good judgments about which ones you think are important and which ones are just silly, and the graduation dress code is one you stressed quite a bitāagainst anybody, including your anti-gay people and your cat callers and your smokers and ā¦ you get the picture. Officially, the schoolās position is that each student decides which rules apply to his or her self, based on their notions of fairness. I have a feeling it wouldnāt end well.
And that policy is also hugely culturally biased, granting implicit favor to those which cultivate anti-authoritarianism and disadvantaging cultures which cultivate rule following.
And those dumb rules are arrived at through a process, maybe even one with input from your colleagues and even students who happen to want uniformity at the graduation ceremony. But of course all that matters is what you think is right, everyone elseās feelings on the matter can go to hell. All you are doing is replacing the authority of policy with the authority of your personal will. If I were the kids, Iād go for the rules.
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Itās the tweed. Itās like a shield of steel.
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Funny thing about authority. Whether itās pissed off or not, what it says is as given. This conversation seems, somehow, to be about how he submitted to authority, and rather needs to be about what he was made to submit to, and how it was enforced on him.
As described the ejection was an abuse of authority, it was not two equals having a spirited debate and one of them losing that debate.
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