Bullied bus monitor grandmother collects donations of $703,833

An American grandmother, pushed into the spotlight when a video of her being bullied by school kids while working as a school bus monitor when viral, accepted a cheque on Tuesday from a Good Samaritan in Toronto who helped raise more than $700,000 in donations for her.

The 10-minute video, captured by one of the students with a cellphone, shows the kids mercilessly making fun of her about her weight and perspiration. They taunt, "Oh my God, your glasses are foggy from your freakin' sweat, you fat a**" and poke her while jeering, "Look at all this flab here."

Klein ignores most of the taunts, but tells them at one point, "Unless you have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." She's told by students aboard the bus to "shut the f*** up."

Eventually, Klein turns her head to the window and begins to cry.

Link

Klein has created an anti-bullying trust with $100,000 of the money. She plans to use the rest of the $700,000 to retire.

I'm in two minds about this. While I was appalled by the bullying at the time, $600,000 is a lot pf money to receive for one incident.

reply to post by ollncasino


This whole situation is just mind boggling to me...$700k for 15 minutes of insults from some snot nose kids

Who were the morons that donated to this fund...I mean of all the other things in this world worth donating to, how did someone justify donating to this ladies situation?!?

Don't get me wrong, this lady shouldn't have had to deal with what she did but $700k..

Stop and think about how much money $700k is!

Also found it strange that with this new found wealth, she only used $100k to start an anti bullying campaign and keeps the remaining $600k to retire ( from my perspective that seems a bit greedy )

This is really hard for me to admit....sometimes I start bawling when I think about it, kind of like a post traumatic stress thing I guess. Anyway, here goes.........
Last week I was behind a school bus, I was minding my own business, thinking about kittens and stuff like that like I always do. The bus in front of me was at a red light and stopped, as I waited for the light to turn green I thumbed through my collection of Anne Geddes pictures, the ones with babies dressed like flowers and little angles.
I put the pictures down and looked up at the back of the bus, there was a boy in the back window, he was big and scary looking, I think he was like 10 years old. That little gangster sneered at me, and this is the hard part, stuck his tongue out at me! As I began to weep uncontrollably and beg for him to stop he actually stuck his thumbs in his ears and wiggled his fingers at me! Some kind of gang sign or cult of Bullwinkle thing I guess.
As you can imagine, I was quite traumatized and will more than likely require therapy, which costs money. Please contact that Canadian guy and tell him my story, I'm too damn proud to do it myself.

Well look at it this way i guess, your taxes probably would have paid to settle this in court at the cost of a couple of million dollars in lawyers paid for by your taxes, so at least this way she was compensated for putting up with this # and scummy youth of this generation out of the pockets of nice people. I guess you can complain she only gave 100k to anti bullying things, i suppose she could have invested some in one of those camps where they send #-head kids of today to get sorted out and get pulled into line because the parents couldnt be assed teaching them respect and manners to the older generation themselves.

So yeah its probably a bit much, i'd more so of said use this money to pay for a lawyer and then find every kid on the bus that did this and give them a good old hiding across the knee lol. 'Oh no you cant hit a child it'll make them bad or make them abusive blah blah blah', can just hear the people who dont support this crying already. Well if little timmy is a little # and doesnt listen, making little timmy stand in the corner because he is a 'bad boy' for being a representation of your inability to control him woop his ass. Im sure little timmy will soon be nice, not advocating abuse just a good old simpsons across the knee ass spanking. It works and if the kid ends up becoming a bad person later on i'm sure the spanking didnt cause it and nothing would have prevented your defective genes from turning him into whatever he becomes.

/end of rant,

feel much better, this weeks be such a week of dumb people, this week i saw on some australian news site some educated women thinking having a glass of wine a week while pregnant is ok, what gave these women the right to think its ok to give their children brain damage, why dont you go have a cigarette also its just 1 a week what damage could it do... dumb people that are dumb because they choose to be really grind my gears, if you're dumb then you cant help it, but if you have a brain and you still do this stuff, darwin needs to come back and delete a generation or two i think.

Woo got a little off topic there but i feel better now, time to go for a nice relaxing cruise in the midnight sky

reply to post by ollncasino


If it was a normal person I'd agree, $700k is a lot.

However she makes like $15k a year with no hopes of retirement .. working that crappy job getting teased by kids probably every day.. Meh, I say $600k ($100k to charity) to retire is a good gift to a hard working old lady.

Originally posted by Rockpuck
reply to post by ollncasino

 

If it was a normal person I'd agree, $700k is a lot.

However she makes like $15k a year with no hopes of retirement .. working that crappy job getting teased by kids probably every day.. Meh, I say $600k ($100k to charity) to retire is a good gift to a hard working old lady.

edit on 9/13/2012 by Rockpuck because: (no reason given)

Thats her own damn fault.... Shes old enough to have been gone to college and could be making 5 times that. She chose to sit on a bus full of dumb kids, she belongs on the short bus.... She does not deserve a penny for this, people go through alot worse situations everyday. Shes nobody special

$700 ($600 for retirement) might seem like a bit too much love to be making up for the bullying, but why does it need to be a problem?

What this thread should have been about is the way that people saw something wrong and decided to fix it. It doesn't need to be about the lady who's life has just been changed unexpectedly, why can't this be about the fact that people got together to make that happen?

I see it as a very small but precious sign of hope that maybe we common people can take back the world from the corporate monsters.

That lady needs no more judgments leveled her way, just let her be now. And consider how the Internet is showing us that we can get together to try and do what's right.

reply to post by Recouper


I guess what you said is exactly the problem I see....I mean why did people rally around this lady's situation and not the tens of thousands of homeless in the US or the starving children around the world or the various diseases that need research funds to find cures for etc. Society really seems to have their priorities mixed up!

That being said, I'm not trying to be negative towards this lady, just trying to get my head around how people donated that kind of money to her cause instead of the more needing causes out there is all.

The money was raised by people willing to donate to her after they viewed the video. I see nothing wrong with it.

I wouldn't give her any money unless she snatched one of them kids by their collar and smacked em across the face for being a disrespectful piece of crap!

I do not advocate violence of any sort, but show me that video and I'll write a check real quick!

Originally posted by Ericthenewbie
reply to post by Recouper

 

I guess what you said is exactly the problem I see....I mean why did people rally around this lady's situation and not the tens of thousands of homeless in the US or the starving children around the world or the various diseases that need research funds to find cures for etc. Society really seems to have their priorities mixed up!

That being said, I'm not trying to be negative towards this lady, just trying to get my head around how people donated that kind of money to her cause instead of the more needing causes out there is all.

I think it's because it's hard to visualize tens of thousands of homeless in the US or starving children around the world. It's kind of like, out of sight - out of mind. The You Tube video made it more personal. I bet whenever those commercials come on TV that show the starving children in third world countries, there is a big bump in donations to help them. Also, when local new shows feature a specific person/family in need - like a family whose house burned down - there are usually lots of donations from viewers of food, money and clothes.

People really are usually compassionate - they just need to see the suffering first hand.

i don't have a problem with this. good luck to her.

reply to post by kaylaluv


I see your point about the outta sight, outta mind and I guess that's part of what irks me about our society...It shouldn't have to be in your face for you to be aware, you should be aware of the world around you naturally and I don't mean Keeping up with the Kardashians type awareness either!

Originally posted by Ericthenewbie
reply to post by kaylaluv

 

I see your point about the outta sight, outta mind and I guess that's part of what irks me about our society...

Believe me, I understand you.

Two things I'd like to say, first is that I'm suggesting that there's actually nothing bad about the bus monitor receiving retirement from people who feel sympathetic towards her plight. Why should she be judged further now that she's been given a life changing amount of money?

Second, the potential for making what you and I both want a reality has been affirmed by this affair.

I agree that there are far bigger issues that are rendering us all guilty and blood stained. To this day, the people who make many of our consumables are dormitory dwellers (factory dorms) working with no breakfast in an attempt to save a truly miniscule amount of money and it's not uncommon for workers to collapse during their shift while the companies who pay those workers are globally enormous, well known, established and immensely wealthy. We all know that, we're all aware of it and yet iphone 5s will be flying out the doors.

The global societal situation has to change. I am, we are, keenly aware of that. One of the biggest worries is that we don't have the potential to make that change happen. I just see this "bullied bus monitor grandmother" affair as a small sign that maybe it can be done. And perhaps we should make a big deal about that aspect of this whole affair, to perhaps try to awaken something in more people.

I don't disagree with what concerns you.

reply to post by Recouper


Well put.

The situation just frustrates me, the potential is there, at least it appears to be based on the act of donating. However it won't do any good for the whole of society if that act can't be more focused on broader impacting humanitarian causes ( Think of what 1,000 homeless people could have done with $700 each or what 10,000 starving children would get even with just $70 each). This situation has simply reinforced that all we see from society is a monkey see, monkey do type attitude, no thinking taking place, never mind any critical thinking.

sad really

reply to post by Ericthenewbie

Some guy called me a a------ on the way to work today? I think somebody should buy me dinner for that.

In all seriousness, I am not trying to condone the behavior of the kids, but the woman's job was to keep the kids in line and keep things on the bus from getting out of hand. It is clear from the videotape she let a situation on the bus get out of control. She was failing at her job in my opiniion.

From day one I didn't get this.

She was the bus monitor. Clearly she wasn't capable of filling that role, seeing that she couldn't stand up for herself, much less stand up for others being picked on.

I'll bet the other kids felt really safe with her around. Not.

Edit: Poster above, you read my mind!

reply to post by Ericthenewbie


I hear you.

I feel the same frustration, misplaced focus is a monumental problem.