Posted by
Bullfrog on Friday, January 12, 2007 8:34:33 PM
The
West Palm Beach NBC affiliate reported that a male assistant principal barged into the girls' locker room and choked a student.
"I have goals I want to achieve and this is stopping that," says 17-year old Sabrina Herndon.
Herndon was wearing a jacket and strapless top and was changing in the
girl's locker room at Palm Beach Gardens High School.
A teacher noticed the strapless top which is a dress code violation.
Herndon says with the jacket though, the top is within dress code.
A male assistant principal then entered the girl's locker room, and
within minutes Herndon was in a choke hold.
"He came behind me and he picked me up with it and he tried to carry me
out of the locker room and then I fell, then he came from under me and
choked me a second time."
Several questions come to mind. One, what on earth was a male administrator doing barging into the girls' locker room when people were changing? Two, why would the teacher who noticed the strapless top go run to rat on the girl? While the article doesn't specifically say that the teacher (gender not specified) ran out to get the assistant prinicpal, he wouldn't have barged in had he not been alerted. Three, why isn't she or her parents filing assault charges against the assistant principal?
"I did nothing wrong to where he had to use physical force. I had no weapons, I made no threats or anything to him."
The school district also has witnesses who say the assistant principal was justified to use force.
They're not telling us specifically what happened because Herndon is a
juvenile. They are saying her behavior warranted felony battery charges.
Normally, I wouldn't be so quick to side with the student. Did she make any rude or obscene gestures? I don't know. The article doesn't explore that possibility, nor the possibility that the student may have argued with the teacher or the assistant principal. But even if she did, it still doesn't warrant the guy barging into a locker room where he doesn't belong, let alone choking her, and slapping her with assault charges. I'm inclined to believe she struggled to get free. That's not the same as felony assault. Neither is belligerence, even if she had copped an attitude, which is unclear.
One thing in particular that bothers me is that the school officials are keeping mum about what happened, citing the fact that she's a juvenile. Sure, she's a juvenile, but that excuse is pure baloney. It smacks of cover-up. They obviously had to cite some facts about what happened to the cops. No need to mention her name to the press, but not even stating simple facts about the sequence of events makes me think the school administrators know the assistant principal was wrong, and simply want the whole incident to blow over.
In my day, we didn't have dress codes per se, but it seems to me that a violation would warrant perhaps a two day suspension, or something like that. This particular assistant principal's reaction was way overblown. Let's see . . . corporal punishment is illegal in most states in public schools, yet an administrator can put a choke hold on a student and claim he was being assaulted? Something's very wrong with that!
And whatever happened to grabbing a female teacher to go into the locker room to fetch the girl to bring her out, if you're a male? Never, ever would a male teacher or administrator have dared to set foot in the girls' locker room when I was in junior high and high school. It simply wasn't done.