Forum - View topicNEWS: Michigan Middle School Boy Suspended Over 'Death Note'
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unready
 Posts: 400 Location: Illinois, USA |
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I think you're thinking bullies are like Bluto in Popeye. Real-life bullies are successful at bullying because they're adept at social manipulation. Also, they have as immense a capacity to learn as any other human. The longer they engage in violent or abusive behavior, the better they get at concealing it from people who would otherwise stop them. |
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Jozoiscute
 Posts: 252 |
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Here we go AGAIN......
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Apollo-kun
 Posts: 1213 Location: City 7, Macross 7 |
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When I was a kid, I made a comic book about a teacher I hated getting blown to smithereens by a fictitious superhero I had made up. I also made a comic book which featured bullies from my school getting the living tar beaten out of them by aforementioned superhero.
Did that mean I was going to do anything to hasten the process of them dying? HECK no. Haven't we all wished ill will on those who have made us suffer in the past? Is there any reason to punish kids for expressing their emotions through the written word? It sure as heck is better than them building up all of those feelings of anymosity inside, until they reach a breaking point. This is one of the many reasons I hate the public education system. As the Who said: "Leave them kids alone!" |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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Exactly. In almost every single case I've read about and have experienced personally, the faculty can't do anything mostly because almost always the bully never fits the stereotypical profile of the deliquent punk. In fact the roles are usually reversed if the he/she doesn't commit suicide first. Here are just a couple out of many examples: http://www.boston.com/community/moms/articles/2010/01/24/the_untouchable_mean_girls/
you see, the real bullies never stand out as being bad kids:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7228335
The Columbine shooters were also relentlessly called queers, also physically beaten, and ostracized for their particular "deviant" tastes (gothic stuff, Rammstein) all by the "good" kids, some of the most popular guys in the school who were all-star football players. You wouldn't know this from most reports at all. In fact those initial reports tried to blame the whole Rammstein/dark/metal/gothic lifestyle for the shooting But later articles who tried to do more in depth coverage into the actual lives of the students involved and those who knew them, their friends -- not just rely on what the parents and faculty perceived -- painted a different picture.
Of course this doesn't excuse their actions ultimately but it does you insight into the root cause of this, after hearing what the friends of the shooters had to say and bear witness to constantly and how the parents/faculty dismissed the reports as "boys will be boys" referring to the football stars' actions as harmless fun, you can see the part that the victims themselves played in this. |
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LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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The band your thinking of is Pink Floyd.... and the song is "Another Brick in The Wall."
While I agree to an extent that it is hard for me personally to forgive those who've... ahem wronged me while I was younger... I know that what you suggest above and this case here is not justice... it's more of a cry for help than anything, and one would hope that the ones involved don't realize exactly what is wrong with what they are doing and can thus get help as opposed to the worse thought that he did it intentionally as a threat... |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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With respect to what configspace said about Columbine, after the shootings the bullies clammed up for a while and stopped picking on the "outcasts". But then the school implemented a new policy where anyone who was wearing gothic clothing and the like had "proper" clothing bought for them by the school and threatened with suspension if they didn't wear it. Once the bullies realised that they were not being blamed for the massacre and that the school was forcing conformity on the remaining students, they started up again. Sometimes it takes death to change people's behaviour, but that doesn't guarantee that the new behaviour will be better. And people always forget the lessons of the past.
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding. |
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hakojo
 Posts: 208 Location: NE Ohio. |
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Well, all I know is that I was bullied from third grade through tenth (the whole rundown - I was ugly, I was weird, I was gay, I was pregnant, although I'm not sure how they managed to reconcile those last two, and kids in middle school threw rocks at me and my best friend), and I've never once made a hit list (pretend or no), shot anyone, or killed myself over it.
So obviously bullying isn't the only thing in play here; some stupidity on the part of the victim is also key. Not to mention a culture that's far too quick to 'understand'. In conclusion: kids, leave your Death Notes at home where they belong. People just interpret them the wrong way, and it's more trouble than it's worth. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6259 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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cue anime haters using the ol "video game made him do it and want it legislated" but replace video game with anime and manga and claiming anime and manga are murder simulator and say it should be legislated un 3...2...1. How long till the anime hater decide to use the "think of the children" just like the video game hater did before them.
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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My god. This boy is a genius. He got on the news this easily. Why haven't I thought about that?
Screws, screws and more screws falling out. The world gets more interesting as we speak. Well then, time to find a building, jump off it, and see if this tail is for real and that I can fly like Goku, but even if I can't, I'm sure my flying yellow cloud will rescue me; if not, Spider-Man will. |
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unready
Posts: 400 Location: Illinois, USA |
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Well, let's keep things clear. Shooting people is bad. Even if nobody had died, what the Columbine perpetrators did was wrong, whether they were provoked or not. This kid thought about two people not existing and wrote it down in a place he apparently intended to keep private. He never told anyone, verbally or in writing, that he intended to take any action whatsoever to make it happen. There's no other indication that he had any plans for anything at all. Daydreaming about someone being killed does not constitute planning or threatening their harm or deaths.
But if you had written about it in a diary and if someone else had read your diary without your permission, should there have been a criminal or civil response against you? Otherwise, yeah, bringing it to school and losing it doesn't demonstrate a capability to overcome anything Darwin might think up. |
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Do I think that as a rational human being? Absolutely not. Would I think that if I were a school administrator and would be held responsible on the off-chance that he did decide to go through with it? Sadly yes. Regardless if the suspension actually helps or not (I view it as more damaging really), I as an administrator could at least say that I took action and tried to discipline the kid, but he was "beyond all control" or something. It's all about saving face in front of the publci. |
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acce245
Posts: 1 |
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Come on, this is Michigan we are talking about. Being literate is a crime in some parts of Detroit.
But in all seriousness, must agree with the folks who feel it looks like a hitlist or threat. What if it were your name in someone's deathnote like that? |
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egoist
Posts: 7762 |
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I'd be as happy as a sheep in a sunny day. Great Teacher Onizuka could solve this with a wink, desu. |
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SS_Vegeta
 Posts: 62 |
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This is like, crime imitates art, hypothetically. Only the person, or few, would initially understand what it means. But writing someone's name in a hit-list book is the same thing. Cancelling out that the kid never intended to physically harm anyone, and pretended that the "death note" would do it for him....in the event he'd never seen the show, he may've simply said: "I'll kill you", or nothing at all. The question is, is this a bad influence on them? It's that simple really, and the answer is simple also. It's "yes".
From where I came from, at 14 years old you had a bedtime since you had to get up for school in the morning, and would not be able to catch such a late night show. As far as I know, Death Note isn't, or wasn't, really popular at all. There was maybe a small period, like a couple months, where I'd hear people talking about it every so often, but I never recall it being popular among that agegroup. Whether it's 12-14, or 15-16. The only thing I can recall sprouting from Death Note's import, was a bunch of controversy and death threats made by some people who'd seen it. I'd imagine the reason this has become a controversial discussion, is simply because this show gave a couple people, who'd seen it, a bad idea. It's just the one fact, and that fact only, that this show gave a few immature people a bad idea. If they were 14, they shouldn't have been watching it to begin with. That wasn't the intended age for it in America. |
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