What are your thoughts on this:

[Rickett Customs]

Taken from NothJersey.com

The mother of a Hasbrouck Heights Middle School student whose pants were pulled down in a gym class last year has served notice to the district and its superintendent that she intends to file a lawsuit seeking $3 million in damages. Cindy Schwalb said in an interview on Tuesday that the “notice of claim” was an essential first step clearing the way for her to file a civil suit seeking damages from the Hasbrouck Heights School District, its school board and Superintendent Joseph Luongo.
However, Schwalb added that she and her husband, Robert, have not decided whether to proceed with a lawsuit over the incident, in which Schwalb’s daughter, then 13, had her sweatpants pulled down by a boy in her gym class.
Schwalb has pleaded not guilty to a disorderly conduct charge stemming from an incident in which she lashed out at school officials at a forum on bullying in September, accusing them of glossing over the issue of “pantsing.” A hearing is scheduled for March 4, and
Schwalb said she would wait until the matter over the outburst is resolved before deciding whether to proceed with a lawsuit over the original bullying incident.
Luongo said he believes school officials handled the incident properly by suspending the boy for a day, ordering him to serve detention on three consecutive Saturdays and banned him from a year-end class trip.
“That situation is months old,” he said Tuesday. “It’s been reviewed by the county superintendent, and we feel confident that we handled it correctly.”
But Schwalb said there were several incidents of “pantsing,” mostly among boys, before her daughter was victimized, adding that school officials created an atmosphere in which that sort of behavior was tolerated.
“They had plenty of opportunities to address it,” she said. “They didn’t really open their eyes to it until it was done to my daughter. This has affected many kids.”

[Relic]

My post in this other thread sums it up well:

Insane/Ill-Informed/Presumptuous/Entitled Parents

"You know....everyone loves to complain at how "ridiculous" schools are these days, usually it's public schools. Zero tolerance policies, out of control political correctness, soft discipline, and so on and so on. There's some sort of incident every week.
No one ever stops for a minute to realize that it's out of control parents that contributed to things being that way - you know, the ones who complain about this and that and launch their own personal crusade over some perceived injustice, or "cause du jour"....
Well, it's either that or the "parents" (or rather sperm and egg donors) who really just don't give a poop about actually parenting and leave it up to teachers and later the law to discipline and "parent" their offspring.
Don't even get me started"

[XtreO]

Wow. We don't do this all the time, but it happens time and time again. Time for the mother to grow a pair.

[Rickett Customs]

There was a time, I can remember getting pantsed and pantsing others, but of course it was always out of fun and also more than 20 years ago too.

[MonetBass]

Originally Posted by Relic

My post in this other thread sums it up well:

Insane/Ill-Informed/Presumptuous/Entitled Parents

"You know....everyone loves to complain at how "ridiculous" schools are these days, usually it's public schools. Zero tolerance policies, out of control political correctness, soft discipline, and so on and so on. There's some sort of incident every week.
No one ever stops for a minute to realize that it's out of control parents that contributed to things being that way - you know, the ones who complain about this and that and launch their own personal crusade over some perceived injustice, or "cause du jour"....
Well, it's either that or the "parents" (or rather sperm and egg donors) who really just don't give a poop about actually parenting and leave it up to teachers and later the law to discipline and "parent" their offspring.
Don't even get me started"

This. I couldn't agree more -- well put.

[Alfie]

How do they come up with the sum of $3m, and where will that money come from?

They deserve an apology, they should accept that and be happy with it.

[PSPookie]

What?! Pantsing! In middle school!

What's next, lions in Africa?

Ridonculous.

Reading this has caused me serious emotional trauma. The kind that can only be soothed with $3 million.

TB, you'll be getting a bill shortly.

[playinpearls]

i dont know why a mother would expect anything more from a government school.

while pantsing was fun and just a part of school when I was younger, I can look back and see what it can do to someone that is truely embarrassed by it. There was a phase when my friends and I pantsed each other, probably for a about a month. at 7-8 years old, i'm sure we can all remember the cartoon underwear that is still made for kids with their favorite ninja turtle...power ranger, whatever on them... I can remember a time in the middle of the entire before school program in elementary school where someone got me, and everyone was laughing at the underwear I had on. I laughed it off at the time, but i didn't wear any underwear ever again that had any kind of print on it... I rotated three pairs for 2 weeks until my mother bought me some normal ones...every set that was bought for me after that at christmas or birthday sat in the drawer in the package until family finally stopped buying them for me.

When you're older you think "whatever, It aint that bad." If it happened now, i'd probably give them the finger, pull my under wear off and chase people around tryin to pee on them or something, but when your 7-8 your mind doesn't work like that. Its so much easier for stupid crap like that to effect you and stay with you for years...

regardless, thats what happens in government schools that claim zero tolerance is actually working...

Here is a great example...

http://gothamist.com/2010/02/03/stud...over_lego-.php

[jugglingfreak]

Originally Posted by Rickett Customs

There was a time, I can remember getting pantsed and pantsing others, but of course it was always out of fun and also more than 20 years ago too.

Ditto.. "Pantsing" was great sport when I was in Elementary, Middle, and High School.. We all use to do it it was good clean fun..

(Well, "clean" doesn't refer to the underware that some people wore..)

It's still around, My daughter used to watch a Nickelodeon show called "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide" that had one episode where one kid kept getting pants by every body. The joke usually involved him running past follow by a mob including one kid dragging a chalkboard that had the score of everyone who had pantsed him and how many times..

If the mother is that worried about just have her send her kid to school in jumpsuits. Problem solved.

[Relic]

Originally Posted by playinpearls

i dont know why a mother would expect anything more from a government school.

while pantsing was fun and just a part of school when I was younger, I can look back and see what it can do to someone that is truely embarrassed by it. There was a phase when my friends and I pantsed each other, probably for a about a month. at 7-8 years old, i'm sure we can all remember the cartoon underwear that is still made for kids with their favorite ninja turtle...power ranger, whatever on them... I can remember a time in the middle of the entire before school program in elementary school where someone got me, and everyone was laughing at the underwear I had on. I laughed it off at the time, but i didn't wear any underwear ever again that had any kind of print on it... I rotated three pairs for 2 weeks until my mother bought me some normal ones...every set that was bought for me after that at christmas or birthday sat in the drawer in the package until family finally stopped buying them for me.

When you're older you think "whatever, It aint that bad." If it happened now, i'd probably give them the finger, pull my under wear off and chase people around tryin to pee on them or something, but when your 7-8 your mind doesn't work like that. Its so much easier for stupid crap like that to effect you and stay with you for years...

regardless, thats what happens in government schools that claim zero tolerance is actually working...

Here is a great example...

http://gothamist.com/2010/02/03/stud...over_lego-.php

Yes, I hear you. My mom, in her infinite wisdom and warped fashion sense, decided that she was going to be a hip parent and MAKE my school clothes. Yes, you heard right. I remember the awfulness that was a red/white/blue checkered blazer with shiny gold buttons. Now, you want to talk about humiliation... but, being a kid and having to deal with unsavory situations like that is part of growing up IMHO. Yeah, I got mocked, even had my arse beat and it did really hurt me emotionally at the time, but then I went and pantsed some kid who was wearing Winnie the pooh undies and it made it all ok. My point is that it 'aint exactly worth a 3 million dollar lawsuit..

The article link you posted - prime example of what I mean about parents being out of control. Teachers and the folks running the schools are really not that stupid, in fact they're probably some brilliant folks but given the threat of "3 mil $ lawsuits for pantsing"? They have to look at anything, any smallest tiniest thing that may set some parent off as a potential bombshell, hence the "zero tolerance" crap.

[hbarcat]

Luongo said he believes school officials handled the incident properly by suspending the boy for a day, ordering him to serve detention on three consecutive Saturdays and banned him from a year-end class trip.



Sounds reasonable to me.



But Schwalb said there were several incidents of “pantsing,” mostly among boys, before her daughter was victimized, adding that school officials created an atmosphere in which that sort of behavior was tolerated.
“They had plenty of opportunities to address it,” she said. “They didn’t really open their eyes to it until it was done to my daughter. This has affected many kids.”


Sounds unreasonable to me.

[hrodbert696]

The $3 million figure is ridiculous and even if a jury were to award it, the judge would almost certainly reduce the amount. It's one thing to say that you can't put a price on humiliation, but then why not one arbitrarily enormous amount of money rather than another? Why not a mere $300K? Or $300 million?

As an actual lawsuit, she would have to prove negligence on the part of the school, i.e. that they haven't implemented an adequate disciplinary policy. It sounds like the school has anticipated that and has their defense ready. There is no disciplinary policy in the world that will guarantee no kid will misbehave.

But everyone's right on target that the real issue is not the school, it's parenting. If she wants to sue anyone, she should sue the family of the pantsing kid. A detention or suspension doesn't really deter any kid from misbehaving (woo hoo! vacation day!). What CAN deter a kid is the thought of what Mom or Dad is going to do when they find out about the detention! If the backup at home isn't there, the school can't do much.

[electracoyote]

Originally Posted by jugglingfreak

Ditto.. "Pantsing" was great sport when I was in Elementary, Middle, and High School.. We all use to do it it was good clean fun...

It's not considered "good clean fun" by most adults. You can't do this in the adult world and get away with it. You shouldn't be able to do it in the youth world either. It is bullying, potentially traumatizing, and borderline sexual harassment. If the schools are supposed to be reflecting society's norms and expectations for appropriate behavior, tolerating "pantsing" is not meeting that responsibility.

You can blame the parents, and you would have a point, but when the child is in the school, he/she (and their actions) become the school's responsibility.

I agree the $3 mill figure is suspect, but if this mother can prove that the adults in this school have taken a lax attitude toward pantsing, she has a case.

[MCBTunes]

Maybe the massive number is to try and get a good sized settlement. When I was 13 we didn't pants girls.

[groooooove]

getting pants'ed is worth 3million, huh?

did it ever happen to me? yes. am i tramatized? no.

will the girl spoken about in the article be "tramatized?" yeah. why? because the mother is telling her she is.

i graduated from a public highschool last year. the words "mother" or "father" are becomming as taboo as the worst of racial slurs. in the same school that (two years ago) a teacher had sex with a 16 year old student (wantagh highschool, heather kennedy.)

gotta love it..

[electracoyote]

Originally Posted by groooooove

will the girl spoken about in the article be "tramatized?" yeah. why? because the mother is telling her she is.

How can you know this? That sounds like a cold-hearted, callous, and wholey unsubstantiable claim.

Maybe the girl is traumatized, maybe she's not. Maybe it happened to you and you weren't traumatized, or embarassed, or hurt in any way. That's beside the point. It's easy to see that, to impressionable, vulnerable children, an episode like that certainly has the potential to be emotionally harmful.

Maybe it's the mother who's traumatized. I would be, if I learned that my child was being publicly exposed and humiliated in that way and the schools weren't doing enough to deter or prevent it.

[Relic]

Originally Posted by electracoyote

How can you know this? That sounds like a cold-hearted, callous, and wholey unsubstantiable claim.

Maybe the girl is traumatized, maybe she's not. Maybe it happened to you and you weren't traumatized, or embarassed, or hurt in any way. That's beside the point. It's easy to see that, to impressionable, vulnerable children, an episode like that certainly has the potential to be emotionally harmful.

Maybe it's the mother who's traumatized. I would be, if I learned that my child was being publicly exposed and humiliated in that way and the schools weren't doing enough to deter or prevent it.

You know, I do agree with you to a point.
BUT, a school can only do so much, there is no way on earth to prevent anything a kid might do. Kids will be kids - they don't usually think about some of the things they do, they just do them. Doesn't make it right or dismiss it, but it's just the reality of it. What's a school going to do? Assign a guardian/chaperon to every student? What they do is try to prevent it by having sets of rules, that, when broken have repercussions. The kid that did this faced those repercussions. he probably was not thinking about them at the moment, but I'll bet that now he is. He does it again, then we have a problem.

Now, on the other hand, a kid that's going to be severely traumatized, ("severely" being the key term) by something like this should maybe not be in a setting where there are hundreds of other kids all with a potential to do something goofy based on the very fact that they ARE kids?

[PSPookie]

Originally Posted by electracoyote

. . . You can't do this in the adult world and get away with it. You shouldn't be able to do it in the youth world either. It is bullying, potentially traumatizing . . .

1. A middle school is not and should not be like the adult world. You're dealing with a bunch of hormonal, hairless monkeys locked together in a large building. Expecting them to behave like adults is folly. If they were capable of behaving like adults they wouldn't need to be in school; we could just put them to work.
2. Bullies are a fact of life. The best thing you can do is teach your kids how to deal with them because they will encounter bullies at all stages of their lives.
3. Traumatic? Possibly, but simply being 13 is traumatic. If it weren't the pantsing then it would have been something else: rumors, dirty looks, namecalling. My point is that no one gets through adolescence without a little social trauma and most of us learn from it. We need to stop raising our children with the whole victim mentality.

[Holy War]

Id be pissed if someone pulled my daughters pants down in the middle of school. I wouldnt be $3 million pissed, but I would expect an apology and for the other child to be repremanded

[nortonrider]

They'll probably want to make the kid register as a sex offender.

In my school days, The girls all started wearing Tube Tops (shirts with no shoulder straps to keep them from being pulled down).

We saw quite a few boobies during that time.