Education commissioner rules Ridgewood boy bullied classmate
By Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger
on July 01, 2013 at 6:05 PM, updated July 01, 2013 at 8:48 PM
TRENTON — A Ridgewood boy committed bullying when he called a middle school classmate “horse,” “fat” and “fat ass” in 2012, the state Education Commissioner has ruled, bringing an end to the legal challenge brought under New Jersey’s high-profile Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights.
The decision upholds a determination by the Ridgewood School Board, which found the then-seventh-grader committed HIB — harassment, intimidation and bullying. The ruling by Commissioner Christopher Cerf also dismissed a legal challenge brought by the boy, now a high school student, and his father.
So sad that we hold out children to such a high standards when one need only look at the nasty comments from adults on websites to know where the problem arises. Children make mistakes and the “adults” in charge at schools label them bullies when those same adults can be heard to use extremely nasty and intimidating rhetoric in defense of their precious teachers union. How many of those teachers have called Governor Christie a fat pig (or something similar) because he has sought to reign in the teachers’ union?
#1 The teachers may think you’re a bully, but I think you might just have hit the nail on the head.
What ever happened to sticks and stones?
#3 the word police arrived. It started with the concept of “hate crimes” where the punishment for violence is increased if you had politically incorrect thoughts while you were hitting someone, and has grown from there. I don’t understand how we as Americans can claim to be a free people when we no longer have the right to say whatever we want knowing that fellow Americans may not agree with us but would defend to the death our right to say it. Wake up people, we are losing our freedoms and too few seem to care.