Archives for June 2012

If you’re a high school, what’s the best way to demonstrate tolerance? If you said that the best way to be tolerant is to shut up those who disagree with you, you might already be qualified to be principal of Wolcott High School in Wolcott, Conn.

In April, Wolcott High set aside a “day of silence” to promote tolerance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and “transgendered” people. Student Seth Groody is opposed to gay marriage and didn’t like the school’s promotion of a specific point of view.

So Seth wore a t-shirt with a slash through a rainbow to express his disagreement. (The picture of the front of the shirt was provided by the family.) On the back of the shirt was a graphic with stick figures of a male and female, along with the words, “Excessive Speech Day.”

That’s all he did. He didn’t bully anybody. He didn’t disrupt classes. He didn’t hold protests. He merely had the gall to have a belief that was contrary to what the school wanted him to believe.

“Tolerant” school officials sent Seth to the office, forced him to remove his t-shirt and forced him to wear another shirt instead. In other words, they suppressed speech they didn’t like — in the name of tolerance.

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For those of us who still wander around the world feeling frustrated about poor grammar and spelling, it’s starting to feel as though we need to take this approach — and we’ll still be ignored as people continue to devolve into “txt spk.”

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Karen Klein is a bus monitor on a school bus in suburban Rochester, N.Y., but she probably feels more like a Christian who’s been thrown to the lions — because the kids she deals with are vile, filthy-mouthed and just plain mean.

On Monday, one of the middle school kids who rides the bus recorded video of various students taunting Klein and making fun of her weight, her clothes and her purse, among other things. It’s disgusting to watch, but you can see it below. Even after it’s obvious that she’s crying, they continue to taunt her.

One of the most heart-breaking parts is when a student says she doesn’t have a family, because they all committed suicide so they wouldn’t have to be around her. Klein’s oldest son did commit suicide 10 years ago, so she said this was the most hurtful thing the kids said to her. We have no idea whether they knew about her son’s suicide.

If this is where the story ended, I’m not sure I’d even be sharing it with you. When I first saw the video on Wednesday, I thought it was too depressing to write about. But then someone took it upon himself to help Klein — and the results have been amazing.

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