General Discussion

You raise some very valid points, and I appreciate that. What angered me, though, was that she seemed so ready to disbelieve the girls who reported this. Later in the article, she was quoted as saying, "“Kids lie a lot. They lie about all kinds of things. They blow lots of things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they do it all the time. So to my knowledge, at 2 o’clock when I checked again, there were no pictures.”

It made me see red that a female authority figure seemed to be so ready to dismiss a report of this kind of blatant sexual harassment from a ternage girl. I would have been angry if a male authority figure did this, but a woman doing it adds insult to injury, afaic.

What if the principal had at least given that girl the benefit of a doubt? What a difference would have made if she had been at least a little bit sympathetic? I can understand that she may have felt that the actions she could take were limited without the direct evidence of the pictures themselves, but it sounds like she was pretty dismissive about the whole thing.

As I said in my earlier post, the tale of boys offending and girls being (directly or indirectly) punished is an old and sad one. If not for the mindset of "kids (especially girls) always be making stuff up," this situation might have been handled much differently. Even though the principal's hands were probably tied as far as disciplining the boys, expressing empathy instead of skepticism could have gone a long way toward at least making this girl feel like 1) she was being heard, and 2) someone actually gave a damn. But it seems clear that didn't happen, and she was obviously deeply hurt by the principal's lack of concern. That is why she was mad enough to literally punch somebody by tne time she got on the school bus.

Yes, the principal did have to play by the rules to keep her job, and I'm sure this has been no picnic for her. But she could have played by the rules and kept her job while also being supportive and sympathetic to this girl and her friends. This was where she really messed up, imo, and it's why I am still side eyeing her treatment of that girl.

Yes, the culture is stacked against her just like those victimized school girls, and that sucks. There are no real winners here (except maybe the patriarchy), that's for sure.