"Cheerleader must compensate school that told her to clap 'rapist'"

Whatever

You didn't read the quote or the source. The situation is one where you stand up against the rapist. I know she should have crept off and hidden so she wouldn't bother the school superintendent at games, leaving the court to her attacker. Everyone could just forget about that whole messy assault thing.

Im sure there would have been far better opportunities to stand up to the attacker, a situation where you are a single silent protest in a cacophony of pro attacker and the team noise and a situation where you have no chance of others supporting you seems strange for someone in "recovery". The whole point of a protest is for it to be seen or heard by those there, unlikely given the situation chosen. Plus the chance of rejection, failure etc is very high. I know you are trying to make my point of view look like I think she should hide and let the attacker get away with it but that's you imposing your thoughts on my line of questions. Try a better form of attack.

Who are you to declare how or when she should feel ready to make her stand. Her silence IMO, was golden.

"Should have done more" is still hardly a standard for blame. How much is enough? Should they be blamed when they don't do "enough" for each and every student who has an issue, or whose parents have an issue? By whose standard is it "enough?" Here, again, I come back to the fact that the courts thought enough was done, so I think the standard of "enough" has been met.

Schools are publicly accountable to the people who pay to come see their games, too. They have an interest in fielding teams that obey the rules and their coaches.

I have also cited reasons why the school's decision was much more publicly accountable than a parent's.

Then I don't see why you can't accept the idea that it was in her best interests to remove her, given the set of rules that all cheerleaders were expected to obey, and the fact that the position and its rules were causing her distress.

The fact that a rule causes someone distress doesn't mean they have to rewrite a rule or make an exception every time. You don't have to play if you don't want to follow the rules - it is that simple. If you still insist on playing, and not following the rules, there will probably be consequences.

It is both fair and in the best interests of the child to have removed her. The school run its teams, which are not democracies or egalitarian societies. They are not "jobs," they are voluntary positions that students may take by choice, if the positions are made available to them.

Removing a student because they failed to comply with something that was not in their best interests is perfectly fair, if the school has already addressed the rules and the requirements of the position with the student, and those rules include activities that are not in the student's best interests.

Should you fault the school for failing to come up with an exception on the spot? They did end up making an exception for HS, eventually. Given the number of conflicts between students, or between students and their schools, you can't expect instantaneous rule-bending or exception-making to resolve disputes either. If the school folds overnight when it has a dispute with a student, and makes a major exception to its rules for that student, other students get in line for quick resolution of their own disputes with rules. It could lead to break downs in discipline if the school has a reputation for rapidly bending over backwards and making exceptions for students.

This was in fact established when I said that the school runs the team. The public doesn't run the team. The parents don't run the team. The school does. It is the school's team. The school acts completely fairly and normally when it makes decisions based on its own pre-established rules and the good reasons I have given to remove students from its teams.

The school would not be a horrendous offender against decency or the first amendment if it cut a student who refused to wear the uniform on religious grounds, or if it cut a student who was made overweight as a result of a crime, or if it cut a student who was made disabled as a result of a crime.

Going further, the school would not be a horrendous offender against decency if it removed a student from a team who developed PTSD as a result of a crime, and that PTSD affected the student's athletic duties/abilities.

If a student has PTSD, and some sporting activity traumatically restimulates that student, causing them distress, then it is in the interests of the student to be removed from the sport. They can and should be removed from the sport.

HS falls into this category - although the PTSD is not diagnosed, she was clearly experiencing post-traumatic stress as a result of the duties of the squad, but insisting to be allowed to remain on the team. Given that the PTS was affecting her performance of her duties, the school was in its rights to act with respect to the performance of its teams, and acted appropriately in removing her from the activity.

I think I addressed your poll question earlier, by pointing out that many, perhaps most, parents would choose to remove their daughter from the team if they knew her molester was an athlete. Much like the school did.

You keep calling it a job, but it's not. It's an extra-curricular activity, provided by the school, at the school's expense, and run under the school's auspices.

I think a majority of parents would agree that it is fair that a school has the authority to enforce the rules it establishes for its teams, since the school runs those teams. I think a majority of parents would agree that it is fair if the Muslim student got cut from the team, or if the overweight kid got cut from the team, or if the disabled kid got cut from the team, or if the kid with PTSD got cut from the team, if their particular issues were preventing them from performing their athletic duties, or if the performance of their athletic duties caused them distress due to these issues.

I wouldn't call it a duty, since the parents' idea of what is in the child's best interest might be patently illegal, unhealthy, dangerous, etc. You're again claiming the school has a duty "to try" to resolve things to the parents and the school's "mutual satisfaction," but you've already agreed with me that mutual satisfaction can be impossible to obtain. How hard do they have "to try," before Anon is satisfied that they tried hard enough? The answer cannot be "until everyone walks away satisfied," because that standard is impossible to meet every time for every student. Please give me a real standard by which you can fault the school or not.

When my kids don't make the varsity football team and I disagree strongly with that outcome, I am going to have you call the school repeatedly and remind them of their duty to speak to me and try to resolve the matter to my satisfaction. That will surely get my issue resolved, and get my kids onto the football team, since that is the only way that I would be able to be satisfied. If the school doesn't accede to my wishes, I will make sure to let you know, so that you can tell them what a horrible school they are for not trying hard enough to resolve this to my satisfaction.

"The duty to try," is not much of a duty at all, and the question becomes about "should have" and "could have done," and "enough." That's not really a standard. There's not much of a delineation to say "this was sufficient," and "this was not enough." If the school has to guess where its auxiliary duties end, it's going to waste a lot of time guessing, and a lot of time going further than it needs to fulfill its secondary duties, for fear of not having done "enough."

The school would be completely within its rights to cut the overweight kid from the team against the parents' wishes. The school would be acting in its own interests, not in the interests of the child, if it did so. It would definitely be in the interest of an overweight child to get the extra physical activity of athletics, beyond his phys ed classes. However, a school needn't put that overweight child's interest above the interest of the school to field a quality team, or the athletes on that team, who also have an interest in having a quality team.

If John has a football, and I want to play with it, it's perfectly fair for John to establish rules for me to play with his football. It's perfectly fair for John to warn me if I've violated those rules. It's perfectly fair for John to take his ball and go home if I violate his rules, even if I had a justifiable reason for violating his rules. I would not be very successful in getting others to be mad at John for this.

The school is like John. The school has an athletic team. If I want to be on the school athletic team, it's perfectly fair for the school to establish rules for me to play...

The case we are discussing is a textbook example of what happens when law enforcement (seemingly deliberately, in this case) botches a prosecution, and the perpetrator returns to society where he can continue to have conflicts with his victim. The fact that it involves sexual violence is completely beside the point. HS could have been a victim of an assault or beating from Bolton, and the outcome of the incident at the basketball game would have exactly been the same for her, assuming law enforcement had failed to prosecute the assault, and she had protested Bolton. Every victim suffers when law enforcement fails to prosecute the perpetrator, not just those who are victims of sex crimes. Every victim suffers when they are bullied for having been victimized, not just those who have been victimized sexually. Some of those victims end up committing suicide.

When a prosecutor does not recuse himself from a prosecution, then declines to indict the defendant, and it can be shown after the fact that this prosecutor clearly had a conflict of interest favoring the defendant, you have a situation akin to where the guardian of the community is letting the enemy walk through the city gates.

Some citizens might unknowingly help that enemy, since he was given a pass by the guardian, and they don't know any better.

You don't fault the citizens for that. You fault the guardian.

We're not talking about Rehtaeh Parsons' case here, nor is there any evidence that child pornography of HS was made or shared.

I was speaking hypothetically about the very real possibility that many students have committed criminal sexual misconduct of the sort that juveniles often do, which goes unpunished and unindicted. Those students are often forced into situations at school where they have to interact in any myriad of ways that you might find abhorrent, whether in teamwork, praise, or critique.

I was pointing out that schools can't deal with every acrimonious ex-relationship that included some sexual misconduct, because there are probably too many.

It's not a breach of discipline, nor can the school can do anything about it when kids date eachother.

It's a breach of discipline that the school cannot control that kids take pictures of eachother, sometimes inappropriately.

It's not in the school's control when kids break up, and hate eachother afterwards, and suddenly see some of the fun things they did together as criminal.

It's not in the school's control when one kid stalks another kid around a neighborhood far removed from the school.

The school can't investigate these incidents to an adequate standard, thus it cannot conclude guilt or innocence for the purposes of punishment or discipline . They don't have a duty to deal with serious breaches of discipline that occur outside their purview. They can only refer them to law enforcement.

Please show me in the job description where the mediation of disputes is among the primary duties of a superintendent or principal.

Whether you took offense to the phrase, it was pretty accurate. If I change "delicate students," to "alleged victims of crimes," is it still offensive? What is it about the phrase "scrambling to make exceptions" that is offensive? You expected them to make an exception for HS on the spot, at a basketball game. You're still faulting them, even after discovering that they Did Make An Exception for her later on. I think that characterizing the speed with which you expected a resolution and exception to be made as "scrambling," is perfectly appropriate.

They actually both expelled her from the team and then reinstated her to the team (the reinstatement was the exception) before Bolton was indicted and expelled from the school. That was before the courts had acted, contrary to what you suggest.

They allowed her to tryout for cheerleading again in the fall (a second exception) after the indictment and expulsion of Bolton.

This is much easier to say in hindsight, with the benefit of the conviction, the acrimony of the lawsuits, and the sensationalism of the reporting having coloured your vision.

At the time, the school could not predict Bolton would be indicted or convicted, nor could they anticipate HS's father's appetite for lawsuits. The school cannot foretell which conflicts will explode, and which can safely be ignored, sparing resources. When a school does foresee a potential crisis, it cannot necessarily calculate how many words in how many right ears, and at what right times, could possibly avoid the crisis. Requiring the school to budget resources for preventive dispute resolution, and then faulting them for doing it insufficiently because they were terrible predictors of the unknown future, is, once again, a poor standard for blame.

We're basically back to you saying "they should try to," but not clarifying on when "should have done" and "could have done," finally become "enough," so that you can finally stop blaming the school.

I didn't say they were rampant in their schools, I said they were rampant among their students. The illegal sexual activities of students that occur off campus and while school is not in session are not the purview of the school - they are the purview of law enforcement. Law enforcement would be the people who need to devote more resources to tackling that, not schools. Schools have few enough resources as it is.

Not an attack bro.
She returned to her life and her protest was in her normal life, done publicly.
Would you have her quit the cheer team? y/n
Would you have her cheer "Put it in" for her rapist? y/n

Quit the team? Yes, if she was to be in that situation where her, at the time alleged, attacker was to be centre stage soaking up adoration after he had escaped conviction.

Would I have her cheer her attacker (again you can't use the term rapist) ? No, I wouldn't put or allow my daughter to be in that situation. It's not healthy no matter how heroic you think it may be.

I'm not declaring fuck all sparky! I was questioning the wisdom.

Ps, her silence probably went pretty much unnoticed by all except the school representatives, again I state, a protest is pointless unless you attract everyone's attention AND they know what you are protesting about. You think it was golden but you now know what she was protesting about, if you were there when it happened you probably wouldn't have even noticed her. If you go to a pro Scientology rally where everyone is cheering and clapping for LRH and you made a silent protest in amongst them with no sign, no mask, nothing, then what's the point? It's an exercise in futility. And because there was no banner, no protest rant I'm leaning towards the view that this protest was aimed at the school rather than the attacker, to force the school to take sides as the legal system had failed to take the victims side.

OMG BLESSED SILENCE FOR 8 HOURS

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I'd mention this here because of the parallels, going right down to both of them getting kicked off their cheer squads.

Another cheerleader has won a 1st amendment (1a) case against her school regarding off-campus speech. Unlike the Silsbee cheerleader - whose controversial speech occurred at a sanctioned school athletic event where cheerleaders quite literally act as the school's spokespersons and representatives - the cheerleader in this more recent case was disciplined by her school for speech that occurred outside of school hours and in the student's own home. SCOTUS ruled 8-1 that the school overstepped here, and protected the 1a right of students to speak freely outside of school.