I think the issue I have is that I see a school as a single group of people. I am uncomfortable with the idea of splitting up people as adults and minors when they are all subject to the same system. Hence, the fact that it was an “adult” on a “minor” is irrelevant to me, I see it as one schoolchild on another schoolchild and both should be treated as schoolchildren.
I suspect that I am not alone in making that distinction, which may be why some have such wildly different views from others.
I missed this part of the Handbook before:
So the offense could be considered “disrespectful conduct” too.
Since we don’t know all the details, I think the pantsing could fall under disrespectful conduct, a malicious prank, aggressive contact, or sexual harassment, though I highly doubt the intent was sexual. The purpose of this type of prank is to embarrass a fellow student, not to get some horny satisfaction. But that’s not to say the girl didn’t feel it was sexual harassment.
In any case, our example school and district policy does not require calling the cops, but they reserve that right. Since in this case they didn’t, we’re left to assume that the infraction was seen as minor. If the girl and her parents disagree they can press charges on their own.
I think if I passed an 18-year-old male, alone, at night on the street, the first thought that crossed my mind wouldn’t be “schoolchild.”
So when does this guy have to start acting like the adult he would be charged as for any other crime?
If you passed a sixteen-year-old male alone on a street at night your first thought probably wouldn’t be ‘schoolchild’ either. If you passed a sixteen-year-old girl in such circumstances your first thought wouldn’t be schoolchild either. I’m not sure how that’s exactly relevant.
He has to start acting like an adult now - though I don’t think anyone excepts him to instantly mature the second he turns 18; in reality, you expect people to mature gradually. Most of us (and the courts) wouldn’t expect an 18-year-old to act as grown-up as a 30-year-old, or punish that 18-year-old in the same way as you’d punish a 30-year-old for the same actions. That goes for all sorts of misdemeanours.
However, I think the age and adult/minor thing is a red herring. Really, his behaviour wouldn’t have been acceptable even at 14. Would the girl have been less upset if a 17-year-old had done the same thing?
Really? Last I heard, you’re an adult in the court’s eyes at 18. The question seems to be why this isn’t a crime on school grounds when it clearly would be anywhere else.
I agree the 18 year old thing is irrelevant for the school, although it might affect how police or courts handle it.
I would take disrespectful conduct sexual harassment to be more like yelling “show your tits” or grabbing his own crotch in a rude gesture. Physically removing her pants goes beyond that. In the Murray County GA hypohetical it seems very consistent with simple battery and law enforcement should have the opportunity to address it.
It’s actually not all that clear that it would be a crime everywhere else.
God, I hate this kind of argument. Do you really expect me to look for a cite proving that courts don’t expect the same levels of maturity from 18-year-olds that they do from older people - that courts don’t tend to sentence 18-year-olds as harshly. Then I’d need to find a cite proving that most people don’t expect 18-year-olds to be as mature as older adults. While I’m at it, shall I look for one proving the Pope’s Catholic?
The kid should be punished, no doubt about it. Counselling would be an excellent idea. You people thinking that his entire life should be fucked up because he pantsed someone in high school (and that is a likely outcome of a sexual assault conviction) really need to get some perspective.
If he didn’t commit sexual assault, then he wouldn’t get convicted and that would not be the outcome.
If he did commit sexual assault, well, he committed sexual assault. No one forced him to “pants” the girl and he needs to pay the price for the crime.
Is anyone surprised that the young man has had a “problem” past, as has the boy who verbally harassed Dinsdale’s son? It is obvious that he used appallingly bad judgement. Assuming that we are adults, we don’t know what is normal or usual in a high school context, but isn’t it interesting that we now have a verb called pantsing and most of us recognized it? His behavior is foolish, juvenile, even infantile.
In Illinois he is an adult and has committed a Simple Battery since he made physical contact in a “humiliating manner”. Do we want to invove the Criminal Justice system in this? If we have concluded that an 18 yr old H.S. Junior will likely end up corraling shopping carts in the Wal-Mart lot, how would it help to turn him into a registered sex offender for the rest of his life? The police don’t just make records of things “so someone knows about it.”
Let’s think about the welfare of the victim. Does she want to be interviewed by cops and/or to go to court and testify about this embarassing matter? I know it is the same logic used in rape, date rape and other sex offenses, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Some victims want an arrest and prosecution but many, possibly most, victims want to get past it and to get on with their lives.
If we trust the school to harbor our children, disarm them at the door and educate them, shouldn’t they judge what is best? KRM’s kid wan’t sure what the big deal is so he doesn’t seem to have been traumatized. The victim cried and we can’t know what the long term effect will be. School staff can be sympathetic and supportive of her and will probably be able to find a suitable consequence for his behavior.
Once again, if all he did was simple battery, he will not be registered as a sex offender. If he committed sexual assault, he should be registered as a sex offender.
Exactly what I was going to say.
And if you were the principal, I’d be sincerely disappointed in the way you chose to handle it.
You’re the one who advocated this “one hour detention,” aren’t you? I just want to give you some perspective on how ludicrous that suggestion is, from the POV of a teacher who has seen these punishments given out for 9 years.
There is no such thing as a “one hour detention” in our school, except maybe lunch detention. Kids get lunch detention for being tardy 3 times. Are you saying pantsing someone is equivalent of 3 tardies? I’d have to say no, if for no other reason than the forcible touching aspect, and the public humiliation/spectacle that disrupts school. One day of in school suspension is for things like smarting off to a teacher in a serious enough way that you get a referral, or threatening another kid. Two days ISS would be for a first time offense of punching another kid or shoving him, telling a teacher to fuck off or suck a dick, or cutting one class. I’d say pantsing another kid is at this level minimum.
If the girl in question was seriously upset, and if it were truly a deliberately humiliating event, I’d think the kid might wind up with a couple of days out of school suspension, which is what you’d get for a serious fight where someone got actually hurt, or chronic fighting.
In my opinion, based solely on punishments I’ve seen get doled out around here, I’d say 3 days ISS or 1-2 day OSS would be expected. Putting your hands on another kid is taken seriously for legal reasons if nothing else, and since the girl was crying and it was done in front of an administrator, I’d lean towards the more severe punishments. For some real perspective, a kid got 5 days OSS for carrying a small Swiss Army knife. Yay zero tolerance.
This would all change if the parents of the girl came roaring into the school, threatening lawyers. Then, you might see a superintendent’s conference, because it would indicate that the situation was probably intended to harm the girl, and was designed to humiliate her, ie., she wasn’t a friend of this boy, and he meant to degrade her. For a teenage her girl to get her parents involved, it would have to be pretty serious. The parents could go so far as to get an order of protection against the boy. It happened in our school after a girl got her ass seriously kicked by another girl in school. The offender got 5 days OSS and has to be accompanied in the school at all times by an adult.
So… one hour of detention is a laughably unrealistic response for an administrator to give for forcibly removing someone’s pants, even if it were a joke that both parties were in on. It disrupts school activities and is totally inappropriate. The administrators have to bring the hammer down or you’d have pantsings all day long, and eventually, someone would cry assault, call lawyers, etc. It’s all about preventing future incidents and damage control. Trust me on this. Schools are very conscious of the risk of being sued.
I was working from the standard Webster’s definition: 2 a: a threat or attempt to inflict offensive physical contact or bodily harm on a person (as by lifting a fist in a threatening manner) that puts the person in immediate danger of or in apprehension of such harm or contact.
I don’t have a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary, so I can’t quote that to you.
I suppose I could be lumping battery into assault inappropriately here, since they’re usually used together, but I believe battery under U.S. law refers to any unwanted physical contact, which would certainly include removing someone’s pants against their will.
Y’know, back in 1959, when I was in grade school, a male student (say, about nine or ten) “pantsing” a female peer a year younger would have been grounds for at least suspension, maybe expulsion. Now, that was a half-century ago. Pulling down a girl’s pants was considered sexual assault FIFTY YEARS AGO!!! HELLOWWWW McFLY!!!
A 17-year-old male pulling down the pants of a 16-year-old female in 2009!? Are you seriously asking this question? It’s called sexual assault, and it should be called sexual assault, and the little fucker should be scared to within an inch of his life (if that’s even possible with teen-agers these days) and his parents should be made to pay for the girl’s therapy. The damn kid should feel the cold steel of handcuffs around his wrists, the school system should flush him completely out, and he should be turned over to the legal system to be “dealt with.”
But, hey, what do I know?
Thank goodness for **Rubystreak!**It is nice hear from someone who works at a school and who did not have to go to extremes talking about rapes, wives, and cites of sexual assault. I work with teenage troublemakers for a living and what you are saying is true in my experience but I would like to add that my district is quick on the draw when it comes to calling the cops in. In the past few years I have had cops called on my kids for smoking, fighting, having sex at school, threatening, and grabbing breasts. In some cases, charges were filed and kids were detained. In other cases, the legal system bowed out and nothing legal happened. In other cases, parents of the victim were called and they provided the engine that kept the legal system involved.
It is extremely relevant that the guy was 18. It has nothing to do with maturity of the kid or the arbitrary nature of the line where adulthood begins. The diff is that the cop or cop supervisor confers with two entirely different groups of people depending on age of the student. If the kid is 16, the Juvenile people get involved and they seem to have more flexibility and compromise with how to handle the situation. They Juvenile people talk things over with their supervisors and they talk to the DA and they together decide if they want to go through with the matter. They call people like me to get my opinion as to what would be both a fair solution as well as what would have the most effect in keeping the troublemaker on the straight and narrow. However, if you are 17, you deal with the adult side of the law and they seem to have less leeway and seem to have more procedures in place. There is some conferencing and reasonable deal making, but that seems to occur when the lawyers get involved.
While “one hour detention” may have been an exaggeration, it was not an unheard of punishment at my high school.
Although yes, any real high school administrator would go for 2-3 days of ISS because that seems to be the default punishment in situations like this. And as I said, I would have no problem with people suggesting that.
My problem comes from people who want the school to involve the police. I think it’s not up to them.
No, it’s not rape of any sort. It IS some form of assault, though, and in this case I think that it very likely has a sexual aspect to it. I said that a guy who doesn’t see anything wrong with pantsing a girl in public might also see nothing wrong with forcing her (violently or non-violently) to have some sort of sex in private. Either he doesn’t know or he doesn’t care that he can’t just do whatever he wants with a girl. Jock culture frequently reinforces this notion.
I think that the cops should have been called immediately, and I think that charges should have been filed. Just because this happened in a school environment doesn’t mean that it’s just kids being kids. I am astonished that the principal or administrator didn’t call the cops, if for no other reason than to cover the school’s ass.
If the 18 YO male pulled a chair from underneath her when she was sitting down, and the 16 YO girl hurt her bum, should the police get involved ? Detention at most for being a bit foolish.
I have assumed that “pants” means trousers, because over 'ere pants are your underwear and that is a bit more serious.
Pantsing is a silly name, we called it de-kegging, you have been dekegged. Your “kegs” are your “pants”.
Over here, if he caused her physical harm, then he’s responsible for her medical bills, if any. Even if it was “all in fun” and “he didn’t mean any harm”. A reasonable person would expect that pulling a chair out from under another person would cause that person to fall down, and it’s also reasonable to assume that the victim might very well get injured. Similarly, tugging on pants, trousers, kegs, whatever, can cause them to fall down, exposing the victim to anything from mild embarrassment to extreme humiliation.
Yes, over here pants mean trousers, panties are female underwear, and sometimes we refer to underwear as underpants. A vest is a sleeveless garment worn over a shirt or blouse, too, it’s not something worn under the shirt.
It was considered sexual assault about thirty or thirty five years ago, too.