Nevada student who swung knife at classmates before being shot by police 'was bullied for days'

a reply to: HawkeyeNation

You said he had no other choice which that is what I was saying is wrong.

Actually, I said he was "left with no good choices." Big difference. And that was said in the context of having already exhausted his "good" choices, going to the responsible adults and authority figures.

Most of us have grown up in the public school system. And a few of us have been bullied by our classmates.

There is much that is not being stated or unsaid in this report. Did the staff know, what all did they do, how many of them tried to take action and stop this before it happened? Did they pull the bully aside and tell him to knock it off?

That is about the extent that the staff is capable of doing until there is actual violence that happens.

And the student who was bullied, what about his father, did he do anything, what was he told by the staff there, did they try to intercede and defuse the situation on his end as well?

And finally the students that were standing around, what were they all doing during this time? Just watching, and videoing this, thinking it was going to be a fight, or did any of them go and try to get assistance to try to stop this?

Too many questions that are not being answered right now.

The end result is that from what we can tell based on the report is this: Child is bullied, no one did anything, he took matters into his own hands and got shot by the officer, cause he failed to drop his weapons. Now all in the area have to deal with the consequences of that choice and action.

a reply to: sdcigarpig

about all the parent can do is go to the school and complain and run it up the school board ladder. good chance that # makes it worse on the kid being bullied.
shoulda messed him up sooner....parents should have taught him that

a reply to: Boadicea

I was bullied all through school and never felt the need to stab people...

a reply to: verschickter

I´m a bit overfed on making every excuse for wrong behavior. The only one to blame are the kids.

Then why are you only blaming the kids? Why do the adults get to make excuses for failing to do their jobs? Or do you think the adults should just step back and allow kids to bully and be bullied?

They know full well what they are doing, they just don´t care. No one can make me believe a 14 year old does not know what he´s doing when he´s bullying another one.

Seriously? No. Kids don't have the critical thinking skills nor the experience to know anything "full well."

The adults, on the other hand, do have the critical thinking skills and the experience to understand bullying. They also have the power and authority to do something about it. The kids aren't innocent and blameless, but the adults have the greater responsibility.

originally posted by: HawkeyeNation
lol, I give up on my previous post formatting.

Right??? Damn evil formatting... grumble grumble...

a reply to: HawkeyeNation


Ummm...I grabbed weapons after years of bullying in school...and did the bullies in...

I balled up my fists and beat the hell out of every last one of them...
Every time I saw another student being bullied...I beat the hell out of the bully...
After a few beat downs the bullies learned...

For the rest of my time there at that school...it was a peaceful place for all the nerdy introverts...
All because one day a shy and introverted kid had had enough of the public humiliation...enough of harassment...enough of the cruelty...

I turned a negative into a positive...simply by denying satisfaction to the cruel...and protecting those that others chose to look down upon...






YouSir

originally posted by: bender151
a reply to: Boadicea

Administrators are supposed to know about how exactly?

I'm not sure how they knew, but at least one of the reports say they did know about the previous bullying, and that they knew specific threats had been made towards the kid that day.

I hope you are not saying that administrators should turn a blind eye to bullying when they do know?

a reply to: sdcigarpig

Very good questions and observations -- thank you!

There is much that is not being stated or unsaid in this report.

Yes, and I believe that's deliberate while police investigate (and administrators cover their butts).

Did the staff know, what all did they do, how many of them tried to take action and stop this before it happened?

I believe in the Reno Gazette-Journal article that I linked it was reported that administrators knew about the ongoing bullying, and that the bullies had made specific threats to be carried out that day. I could find absolutely nothing about any previous actions taken against the bullies.

originally posted by: TheBulk
a reply to: Boadicea

I was bullied all through school and never felt the need to stab people...

Good to hear.

But it has absolutely no bearing on the OP, which is about the responsibility of the adults, and what they did or did not do.

i was bullied off an on in school. I changed schools every 2 or 3 years so i was always the new kid....that didnt help. In 8th grade i went to a very dark place where i was ready to kill. I was seeing a girl who had a jealous ex boyfriend. He said he would show up at the school dance and beat me down. I was mentally ready and would have done whatever I needed to to put the issue to rest for good one way or another. His friends who were still students at the school saw my demeanor and knew it was going to be bad if he showed up. My adrenaline was so high i had to go outside in the rain and run laps. He never showed and I got invited to the principles office to talk about it. I went home and nothing ever came up again. Maybe someone tipped him off, i have no idea...but after that no one messed with me.


Public schools are a joke. I cannot truthfully say i had a single worthwhile scholastic experience in any public school growing up. When i switched to christian schools things improved vastly...probably owing to the better teacher/student ratio and more focus on actual education rather than glorified babysitting.

When things like this happen the failure sits squarely on the adults. Humans dont have fully developed frontal lobes until their 20s.....so actually if we were really going to structure society around real science and biological understanding we wouldnt even allow kids to join the military and die. Nevertheless, we are not as sophisticated as we think we are.....we are not as enlightened or evolved as we think we are. As long as we are sacrificing children to the gods of ignorance, neglect, and apathy we are no better than the mayans who happily cut out their hearts on the tops of pyramids. Our children might be biologically alive.....but the system is designed to kill us spiritually, creatively, and in every other way that truly matters.

So sad for this boy and his family.

a reply to: Boadicea

It's a catch-22 for kids (and parents) anymore. If a child is being bullied, school systems claim a no-tolerance policy on the matter, but we all know that this impossible and often only lip service.

But what isn't lip-service is things like no-touching policies, and when a child is tormented, even if they can fight back, they end up getting in trouble as well, even if they were in the right to defend themselves.

So, that leads to a tendency for kids not to fight back in time-tested ways that may injure someone, but at least it would usually get the bully off of their back when they stand up for themselves. When they can't fight back, they continue to get bullied. When they continue to get bullied, if they are not strong-willed kids and have parents and other friends who can and will back them up, they generally develop a disorder that can cause them to do drastic things (suicide, school shooting, assault people with knives, call in bomb threats, etc.).

The we get to the parents, who are often berated, investigated, or publicly shamed if we try to do things like train our children to be able to defend themselves with fists and legs--we're contributing to violence, they say. It's not healthy to promote fighting, they say. So, most parents cower away into the shadows and just assume that the school is enforcing their no-tolerance policy of bullying--again, which we know that they're not.

So, tell me, here--what do we do? When I was a kid, if you got into a fight on the playground, you may have gotten in trouble for fighting, and maybe you were sent home for a couple days or so, but you went on with life. Now, it seems that, if it comes to violence, it's been bottled up for so long because of the aforementioned issues that it's like a powder keg exploding, and then cops are called, people are shot, school districts are shut down, Congress and the White House get involved, and suddenly it's a national crisis.

My choice would be to let kids figure it out. If a kid needs to defend themselves, let them, without turning them into a criminal for doing so. If I have the right to shoot someone in self defense, can't a kid throw a few punches in self defense and it not be the end of the world?

We're raising a bunch of cowards, and it's not their fault. Adults are creating these situations for them, and their young minds are finding the best way to cope that they know how. It's a sad reality.

a reply to: Boadicea
a) Sometimes the parents don´t know everything, although in this case, it seems it was known.
b) With 14 years, you are judgeable before law (at least here in germany), there is a reason for this.
c) I started working a job when I was 15 years old, so a 14 year old is hardly "a kid" it´s a teenager and if I managed to know how to behave, I expect it from other people too.

d) Your last paragraph, I´m 100% on you with that. I correct my statement, the kids are mostly to blame.

schools aren`t allowed to discipline students anymore that`s why things escalate and things like this happen.

way back when I was in school they would suspend you or even expel you for doing things that weren`t even illegal,they were just a violation of the school rules.Now students are allowed to break the law and they don`t even get a slap on the wrist.

Nations bully nations, and go to war.

The US Bullied Japan, cut off their oil supply, and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor as a result, then the US dropped the Atomic Bomb in retaliation for that response...and on and on...

You can't tell a kid not to bring a weapon to school to protect himself against bullies, when the whole world is doing this on the grand scale.

The right actions start at the top.

Don't blame kids, when the President is promising to build up the military so that the Nation can do more of the same.

Why are people looking for excuses for a kid that is a danger to himself and others? It was his decision to wield a knife and attack others. No one else's. He's lucky he survived. If he recovers he'll have a nice scar to remind him that society has rules. Perhaps we can move back to a common understanding of personal accountability and responsibility.

originally posted by: tribal
i was bullied off an on in school. I changed schools every 2 or 3 years so i was always the new kid....that didnt help. In 8th grade i went to a very dark place where i was ready to kill. I was seeing a girl who had a jealous ex boyfriend. He said he would show up at the school dance and beat me down. I was mentally ready and would have done whatever I needed to to put the issue to rest for good one way or another. His friends who were still students at the school saw my demeanor and knew it was going to be bad if he showed up. My adrenaline was so high i had to go outside in the rain and run laps. He never showed and I got invited to the principles office to talk about it. I went home and nothing ever came up again. Maybe someone tipped him off, i have no idea...but after that no one messed with me.

Thank you for sharing that. It's pretty much just what this kid must have been feeling. When they made a specific threat, like you, I think he just went into "now or never" mode. He couldn't flee, so he prepared to fight.

When things like this happen the failure sits squarely on the adults. Humans dont have fully developed frontal lobes until their 20s.....so actually if we were really going to structure society around real science and biological understanding we wouldnt even allow kids to join the military and die. Nevertheless, we are not as sophisticated as we think we are.....we are not as enlightened or evolved as we think we are. As long as we are sacrificing children to the gods of ignorance, neglect, and apathy we are no better than the mayans who happily cut out their hearts on the tops of pyramids. Our children might be biologically alive.....but the system is designed to kill us spiritually, creatively, and in every other way that truly matters.

So much truth and wisdom in your words. We are failing our kids (and ourselves) in so many ways and don't even realize it.

So sad for this boy and his family.

It sure is.

originally posted by: SlapMonkey
a reply to: Boadicea

It's a catch-22 for kids (and parents) anymore. If a child is being bullied, school systems claim a no-tolerance policy on the matter, but we all know that this impossible and often only lip service.

But what isn't lip-service is things like no-touching policies, and when a child is tormented, even if they can fight back, they end up getting in trouble as well, even if they were in the right to defend themselves.

So, that leads to a tendency for kids not to fight back in time-tested ways that may injure someone, but at least it would usually get the bully off of their back when they stand up for themselves. When they can't fight back, they continue to get bullied. When they continue to get bullied, if they are not strong-willed kids and have parents and other friends who can and will back them up, they generally develop a disorder that can cause them to do drastic things (suicide, school shooting, assault people with knives, call in bomb threats, etc.).

The we get to the parents, who are often berated, investigated, or publicly shamed if we try to do things like train our children to be able to defend themselves with fists and legs--we're contributing to violence, they say. It's not healthy to promote fighting, they say. So, most parents cower away into the shadows and just assume that the school is enforcing their no-tolerance policy of bullying--again, which we know that they're not.

So, tell me, here--what do we do? When I was a kid, if you got into a fight on the playground, you may have gotten in trouble for fighting, and maybe you were sent home for a couple days or so, but you went on with life. Now, it seems that, if it comes to violence, it's been bottled up for so long because of the aforementioned issues that it's like a powder keg exploding, and then cops are called, people are shot, school districts are shut down, Congress and the White House get involved, and suddenly it's a national crisis.

My choice would be to let kids figure it out. If a kid needs to defend themselves, let them, without turning them into a criminal for doing so. If I have the right to shoot someone in self defense, can't a kid throw a few punches in self defense and it not be the end of the world?

We're raising a bunch of cowards, and it's not their fault. Adults are creating these situations for them, and their young minds are finding the best way to cope that they know how. It's a sad reality.

Wow. That was brilliant -- thank you!!! That was a lot to say and a lot to put together and you did it so very well!

We really have made a mess of things. One of the thoughts that came to mind as I read your words (I had many thoughts come to mind!) is that perhaps it's time for self-defense classes in schools. Making them defenseless hasn't worked. Maybe we'd have fewer bullies if we had more kids -- all kids -- who could defend themselves. Actually empower our kids...

And those skills would serve them well into adulthood. But that may be the real problem, eh?

Kids who are bullied are bullied for a reason!

Did he bring the knife because he was bullied or was he bullied because he was the type of person who would bring a knife to school.

a reply to: AMPTAH

You can't tell a kid not to bring a weapon to school to protect himself against bullies, when the whole world is doing this on the grand scale.

Your point is very well taken.

We do the same on a legislative level -- we'll just pass a law to force others to our will, using the long arm of the law and the barrel of a gun... We have collectively adopted a might-makes-right approach to pretty much everything.