Posted on 10/31/2005 12:41:33 PM PST by freepatriot32
Dr. Sandra Pacheco believes that her daughter was punished at Elk Grove High School for doing what she thought was the right thing. She argues that a school district policy is making its campuses unsafe for girls. Before Elk Grove High’s homecoming football game on Oct. 21, she and her daughter’s stepfather, Jeff Franklin, handed out flyers to parents driving out of the school’s front parking lot and told them about their case, and asked if they shared the same problem.
The couple displayed a sign that read: “Is Your Daughter Safe at EGHS? Not as Safe as You May Think.” Pacheco plans to file a complaint to the school district, but wants to alert the public about what she considers to be discrimination against female students. Pacheco requested to have her daughter be anonymous in this story for her protection.
The situation began on Oct. 5, when a 16-year-old boy allegedly assaulted her 15-year-old daughter during lunchtime.
The boy – who was much taller than her, allegedly threw her against a wall, leaving her with a sprained wrist and causing her to bite down on her tongue and cut it. The attack reportedly came in response to Pacheco’s daughter squirting water at the boy after he threw two drinks that hit her and her friends.
Pacheco said her daughter tried to kick him in the groin while she was allegedly being assaulted, as that was what she was taught to do whenever a man assaults her, but she could not budge from getting pinned against the wall.
Friends of the accused attacker reportedly told him to stop assaulting Pacheco’s daughter, and he reportedly yelled back, “I don’t care if she’s an (expletive deleted) girl, I’ll smack her anyway.”
A student then intervened and the incident was over. Pacheco said that school officials never contacted her after he daughter went to the office to have her injuries taken care of.
Pacheco added that her daughter did not notify school officials about the attack until a few days later when she tearfully told a teacher and was scared her assailant is still at school.
The mother said that the teacher contacted Principal Catherine Guy and Vice Principal Larry Johnston about the incident.
Pacheco’s daughter then got suspended for three days, along with her alleged attacker and everyone else involved with the incident. The mother said that Guy and Johnston claimed they followed the school district’s “zero tolerance” policy against student violence, claiming that her daughter engaged in “mutual combat,” given that she tried to kick the boy and had thrown water at him. “When is water a threatening agent?” Pacheco recalled asking Johnston.
She said that she is planning to file a uniform complaint to the Elk Grove Unified School District to rescind her daughter’s suspension and to change its “one size fits all” violence policy. The mother alleges that the mutual violence policy discriminates against girls as they are usually unequal in strength to boys and cannot fight back with equal force.
“This is not just about my daughter,” Pacheco said. “It has tremendous implications for all students at Elk Grove High School…the message is that girls who are going in to get help are being punished – so they are not going to seek help, they are going to take abuse instead.”
Franklin said, “One size does not fit all – they have a blanket policy with absolutely not digression over the severity of it.”
Pacheco mentioned that her daughter has been readjusting to going to class, but is still fearful about her alleged attacker being at school.
“Their intentions may be good but they need to realize that it’s having some very serious impact in a very negative way to kids who are victims,” she said. Pacheco said that her appeal to the suspension at Elk Grove High was unsuccessful.
Johnson and Guy did not comment on the incident, as District Spokesman Jim Elliott said officials are forbidden to speak about student disciplinary matters. Elliott added that student discipline matters are kept confidential and that all school employees are not permitted to comment on them to the media.
Elliott mentioned that if it is proven that there was “mutual combat” between students in an incident then school district policy holds that everyone involved gets disciplined.
“If there is a report of a fight, school administrators conduct a thorough investigation and take appropriate disciplinary action against students involved in the incident,” Elliott said.
The EGUSD Code of Conduct holds that a student can get suspended, expelled or arrested if he or she attempted or threatened to cause physical injury, or had “willfully used force or violence upon another person, except in self-defense.”
Pacheco said that she does not understand why the self-defense clause was not applied to her daughter’s case, given that she tried to kick her alleged attacker. We kept pushing them to say if that wasn’t ‘self-defense’ what was it,” Pacheco said.
The mother said that she was told her daughter allegedly “initiated” the incident by squirting water at her alleged attacker. “As far as I know about constitutional rights, you have the right to defend property, and person especially,” Pacheco said. “They’re saying that she doesn’t have her constitutional right to defend person and property.” One Elk Grove High student had a similar case of getting suspended for allegedly agitating an incident by throwing water. However, Curt Lopez said that he was just being playful.
Lopez said that he once got suspended for a day after campus security saw him playfully throwing back water at his female friend. “She didn’t even care (about the water) and she felt bad about me getting into trouble,” he said.
Pacheco and Franklin recently launched a Web site called ProtectOurDaughters.net, which aims to inform the public about what they see as a major problem and to gather stories from other parents’ about their daughters and sons getting alleged mistreatment at the hands of school officials in the cases of bullying and trying to stop assaults.
A few accounts were posted including an incident where one parent claimed that during an athletic event, one player attacked an opposing team’s player who was later defended by his teammate – all three were suspended. There is also an account where a family sought help from his high school as he got repeatedly bullied; the student was then re-enrolled at his former school more than 100 miles away in San Jose.
On her Web site, Pacheco argued that school district’s “zero tolerance” policy punishes, but not prevents violence, saying that research has shown that “punishment rarely changes aggressive behavior.” Franklin and Pacheco said that the public response to her protest was generally positive, while he mentioned that one father supported the “zero tolerance” policy. They said that many parents had shared similar stories about their children with them, while many other parents were surprised about hearing there was a problem with the policy.
“There be a moment of discomfort because they now have to react and respond, but once people do understand that there are real-life people that are being hurt and impacted by this, everything I know about humanity says that we need to fix an unjust situation,” Pacheco said.
Dr. Sandra Pacheco and husband Jeff Franklin staged a protest against their school district’s student violence policy outside Elk Grove High School before its homecoming football game on Oct. 21. They believe that the policy wrongly suspended their daughter after a boy at school reportedly assaulted her.
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Good for them. The schools need to learn how to throw out violent students.
And no, I don't care where they go.
It's pretty sad when protecting yourself from an assault is considered "mutual combat".
Sorry to say that this is the natural result of having to treat boys and girls exactly the same. There is no doubt that if it were two boys they would both get into trouble.
Don't agree with the concept, just pointing out the situation.
homeschooling++
She hurt her case by not reporting this incident earlier.
She shouldn't have escalated the incident. She should have been suspended for a few days. The parents are doing her NO favor.
The parents should add a serious grounding to the suspension penalty and pursue criminal charges against the boy.
While it's not classy for a guy to push a girl, girls shouldn't get a free pass when it comes to altercations either. If two boys had been involved, there would be no debate that both should have been disciplined.
After women's lib, equality, etc., it seems that there is finally parity - the boy treated her just like anyone else.Sarcasm on: I think that there should be a victory rally at the school by NOW to celebrate this breakthrough. Sarcasm: off.
I plan on teaching my girls how to lethally and non-lethally defend themselves when they get to the appropriate age.
Ping
Zero tolerance = zero intellegence.
Are YOU serious? HE throws drinks that HIT her....and she responds with squirting WATER at him, and HIS response is to ATTACK her......YOU are WAY outta line. NO, she should not have squirted the water, BUT, the retaliation was TOTALLY uncalled for. The kid is probably going to be a wife beater, so, I guess, who cares.....There ARE different standards for males and females....unfortunately today, we don't teach them. (Men should be TAKING care of and PROTECTING women.)
I'll grant that squirting water was probably improper, but to define kicking a boy in the groin as he's slamming a girl up against a wall is pardon the pun, nuts.
If my child were the one who threw the water, I would also expect consequences for him or her.
A lot of schools talk about a bully-free zone, but they have no clue. I've never heard of a school that seemed to have a good policy -- other than private schools which can say "You're a problem: never come back."
If schools cannot kick out the bad kids, and if the good kids cannot fight back, then only bad things can be in store. You couldn't design a system more prone to injustice.
It's bad form to engage in the same type of petty behavior and then cry foul when it reaches a level you don't like.
Give me a break, treating a person who reasonably and predictably responds to an act of agression the same as the person who iniates the agression is what I like to refer to as "the even-handed copout".
True, she was wrong to toss the water. If that's all they're suspending her for, okay. If they're suspending her for fighting back once she was assaulted, they're wrong.
You've bought into the story as told by the parents, who are believing the story exactly as told by the daughter. I've learned to be more skeptical than that.
Guys shouldn't pick on girls, but girls shouldn't egg them on either.
I don't like parents who send their kids to school and then circumvent the school's authority when the school needs to keep discipline. My parents would never have ~considered~ coming between me and the trouble I get in at school. If they disagreed with the school, they'd never have let me know it.
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