Getting a bit… draconic in here.
A few link-backs. First, the return of the Terrible Tolerance poster.
Also, Chris Thompson: baseball enthusiast, collector of turtles, ex-elementary school gym coach, current Wool-Mart grocery bagger.
Todd probably shouldn't have made that hobbit crack. I mean, hobbits are peaceful farm folk who want nothing more from life than a good pipe underneath a large oak on a balmy day. It's almost a compliment. Unless you count Smeagol.
What a stuck-up little hobbit.
Truth be told, Selkie must cause so much out-of-the-norm mayhem that the little guy must’ve developed a serious migraine by now.
Seriously, what a horrible man, he doesn’t deserve to be called a hobbit with a little mind! Or is it a little hobbit with a mind?
I totally buy this though. This is exactly the kind of utter nonsense bureaucratic that schools dish out in these situations. The principal is probably worried about what the boy’s parents will do.
That terrible tolerance poster is the best ever. XD
And that principal should be [censored] with [censored]-[censored]-[censored] and [censored] until he [censored] and [censored].
Seriously, there’s so many things wrong with that school’s administration.
I find this comment to be full of win, and very much in keeping with the spirit of the comic.
As a government employee, I’ve witnessed our own bureaucracy at work, and I’ve often observed that for those in positions of authority, when they make mistakes, it is very hard for them to self admit that they’re wrong.
Also, executing the PE teacher seems a little harsh.
I haven’t seen such bizarre hair-splitting since they courtmartialed a junior officer for leaving the bridge with another wounded officer for abandoning his command when everybody else above him was incapacitated.
William Cox. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sitgreaves_Cox
Did Robert Heinlein introduce you to him, too.?
Eyup. But you’ve got a better link. I didn’t even have names…
Ok, this is where I give up defending the principal. He has just lost all my respect.
If there’s one thing I learned years ago it is this: Anybody who can’t stand to have his judgement questioned NEEDS to have his judgement questioned.
Freaken little hobbit bastard! At this point if I was in Todd’s shoes I would tell him I’m going to tell every reporter who is willing to listen that his daughter was assulted at school and was suspended for defending herself. Kids being shaken like f*ck anyone shaken like that lead to serious brain injury or DEATH! She was very close to a wall her head could have flopped against it! OOOOOOh that principle would be fired so fast his head would spin.
In the words of a famous Black Mage … fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Seriously! Principal Lotho Sackville-Baggins! You are one of the ONLY TWO PEOPLE IN THE SCHOOL who know about Selkie’s ectothermia! YOU OF ALL PEOPLE should know that SELKIE’S LIFE WAS BEING THREATENED AND THAT SHE COULD HAVE BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED HAD SHE NOT ACTED WHEN SHE DID! And Truck REFUSED TO STOP SHAKING EVEN WHEN TEACHERS WERE IN SIGHT!
Rrrgh! Arrgh! http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Angrish
*There is, in fact, a nasty non-Smeagol hobbit, and Lotho Sackville-Baggins is he.
I remember! Wormtongue ate him.
She was probably too sick to notice the teachers.
However, it will probably work out for her own protection, keeping her away from this “war” that was mentioned before, and possibly averting disaster.
He knows she likely had blurry vision and could have died. They don’t know it was that extreme, plus they saw, and, yet, they’ re still on her side. Whats wrong here?
Punish the victim ? Color me shock! It’s only the daily joyful activity of someone in power!…
Um, not to throw gasoline on a smoldering fire…
This is pretty STANDARD in most public school systems. You’ve all heard of it, let’s all sing along together, yes?
ZE-RO TO-LER-ANCE.
What that *really* means is that any form of agression, INCLUDING SELF-DEFENSE, is not tolerated and is punished.
This, in reality, is a SHIELD to protect bureaucrats from their own bad decisions– if it turns out that the protagonist was actually the antagonist, that’s OK, we punished BOTH of ’em.
I have seen this happen SO many times that I have taken BOTH of my children OUT of the public school system and now pay over $30K per year to have them educated privately where bureaucratic bullshit like this doesn’t happen.
…and the number one job description of my relatives in my (rather large) extended family is “public school schoolteacher”, so don’t tell me I don’t know what goes on.
Yep, very accurate depiction of a public school principal. Butt-covering is the one and only deciding factor in all decisions made.
Which still means he deserves a *BLEEEP* in his *BLEEP BLEEP* while *BLEEP* tries to *BLEEEEEP crakle fizz…*
Aw crud I broke the button. 🙁
“I have seen this happen SO many times that I have taken BOTH of my children OUT of the public school system and now pay over $30K per year to have them educated privately”
Actually that could be the flip-side of the argument. We in the west seem to be so adversed to paying taxes that the bureaucrats don’t have enough funds to do the job right: There’s not enough money to hire enough qualified teachers.
The problem here, though, isn´t qualified teachers, it´s principals with more brains than a jellyfish and more spine than an earthworm.
But here too the problem is not enough money to hire someone more qualified. Children are our most precious resource and we should be more willing to invest more in their development, whether it be teachers, administrators, up-to-date books & a fact-based curriculum or healthy lunches.
Umm, yeah, the principal is depicted realistically. Our district recently had a situation where a group of about eight boys assaulted one boy at a gas station on their way to school. The cops were called by the clerk and the cops promptly referred it to the school who suspended three (or four) of the boys for fighting including the victim. But you should see the video of the incident. It’s the old rule that if you raise your arms to shield your face you are as guilty as the guy drubbing you. People are not too thrilled about this one where I lived, especially since the kids were in the upper high school age.
The old gym teacher would perhaps have merited being fired if he had in fact been in the girl’s washroom preventing the incident and leaving a gym full of kids unattended. Picture this on a daily basis: “Okay class, play gently why I go to the little girl’s room with Mary-Lou who needs to pee.”
Panel 3 & Panel 7 me/tears up at the sight of Selkie’s face, and her pose in the last panel….
And nobody seems to realize that this sort of policy increases violence. If I’m going to be punished for fighting whether I hit back or not, I’m going to beat the tar out of whoever attacks me.
And I sir agree.
Not so fast Sméagol. If you know about Selkie’s physical issue, then you should know that the state she was in meant she probably didn’t even know the teachers were present.
And I’d looooove to hear what the teacher’s union would have to say about that threat.
As a former public school teacher- that crap really happens. As someone said before- zero tolerance. If you hurt your bully in any way, you are just as guilty.
I have seen this first hand. My brother was suspended for a fight with another kid at a bus stop. The other kid had a history of starting stuff and even spent time in juvenile detention. The worst part was that my brother never even touched the kid. he just put his hands up to block the incoming punches.
My brother who was programming in 3 languages and A+ certified before becoming a junior in high school ended up quitting school due to harrasment and because he saw the teachers refusing to help. The truth probably was they couldn’t help because of either upper management or zero-tolerance rules.
I convinced him to go back and get his diploma and take night classes with people who actually want to be at school. He did, got his degree and works for a major car company designing software and testing applications.
Good for him!
The best revenge is living well!
Course you’ve got to survive first…
I was always aware that this was the case, and would frequently allow myself to be struck to use this rule against them…
But, incapacitated and brain-fucked? Yeah, I think Selkie should be let off.
Todd, you just got so much more love for that insult. XD
Just to throw more kerosene onto this bonfire, I’d also like to remind everyone that Selkie and George have an off-camera reason to believe that Principal Ashton is dating one of his subordinates.
No one took the bait!
Oh well.
I have a more pleasant story to share. In high school, I was still being targeted. Things improved around year 10, but in year nine, one of the kids who traveled the same line as me started baiting me at the train station, trying to provoke me. Eventually it worked. I grabbed him and swore at him.
Next day he asked my if this particular teacher didn’t like me. His mistake.
I got called in, I asked if this was about (student), gave them the story.
I was still punished, BUT they explained WHY and apologized, and gave me a choice of ‘punishment’, and I accepted and said that’s fine. I got to finish my work in a quiet room without distractions for a couple of days.
I did call it, though. The same thing happened to me when I was in a fight.
Aside from the personal outrage, I didn’t think suspension was that bad. I thought of it as a free week off. Hell, I even went to the pizzeria near the school to chill with my friends at lunch time.
Granted, it was probably thanks to my parents that it went so well.
Dad: Why are you home early?
Me: I got suspended for being in a fight…
Dad: …..Did you hit him back?
Me: Yea?
Dad: Then its fine. Lets get some pizza.
(In case it wasn’t obvious, pizza is my favorite food :3)
Todd is going to resign Selkie into a different school after this, knowing how the principal is.
It is probably going to go in another direction. New school means tons of new characters to create, each with their own personalities that are different form the previous cast. Plus the other orphans are such a big focus that their removal would cause too much of a shift.
Odds are Todd is going to do something more dangerous, such as file legal action or get the principal’s supposed relationship with the music teacher made public.
True but what about that agent?
I’d think that they would want to limit Selkie’s exposure to other people so not to raise too many questions about what she is. Perhaps he’ll show up at some point to talk about this. I can only hope.
Personally, I wonder if that is the pricipal’s GOAL here. After all, when Selkie was an orphan, he was probably stuck with her and her social problem and her medical needs and her SCARY GOV’T GUY no matter what he did. This seems like it must be the local public school, so probably the orphanage has to send kids there. But now Selkie has a relatively well-off involved parent who won’t tolerate this stuff and will likely find it easier and cheaper to vote with his feet than sue the school. This dude seems capable of that level of sleaze.
i say its time for some lawyerball. get the local news and talk to the school board about this.
To be fair, Smeagol looks like Friggin Bilbo net to this D-canoe!
What I really love about the whole “tolerance” thing is that everyone keeps forgetting or doesn’t realize it’s entirely the wrong word for what they really mean. Wiktionary says: “To allow (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) to exist or occur without interference.”
So by promoting “tolerance” what you’re actually saying is that you disagree with integration, but the kids should put up with it anyway. You’d think that educators would have realized this mistake by now. I’m pretty sure most schools have access to a dictionary somewhere in the building.
I remember a South Park episode talking about that. Paraphrasing for incomplete memory and, of course, language: “Tolerance doesn’t mean you have to LIKE it, just don’t be a jerk about it!”
Gay Tolerance is interesting. I remember a comic with a woman carrying a placard “I PUT UP WITH MY LESBIAN DAUGHTER” and asking her daughter, “Do you want me at the rally or not?”
Three things come to mind:
1) Nothing is more tyrannical than a tiny mind with a little power
2) “Zero tolerance” is “Zero intelligence”
3) This is why teachers’ Unions are a good thing.
Teachers’ Unions can be a mix. A good teacher can’t be fired for political reasons, which is good — but a bad teacher can’t be fired for stalking her school’s principal (they moved her to another school, instead…), mocking a kid with an IEP — in front of the rest of the class, or being incompetent in general. Heck, it took *two* DWIs before the middle school principal was fired, and he wasn’t even a teacher.
If the gym teacher was part of the union, about all they could do would be move him to a different school in the district, from how I understand things.
As a student of Education currently in a class about Special Education. The fact that anyone would laugh about an IEP is kind of pathetic and sad. The fact that a teacher would do it makes me weep for humanity.
All right… I guess now the gloves are off.
I´d love to see Todd react with something like: “Then you will have your judgement questioned by ME, you pea-brained bureaucrat! How DARE you punish my daughter for defending herself when her life was threatened? Do you want her to DIE just so you can avoid having to make a decision?
I´m taking Selkie home with me now. She´ll attend classes tomorrow, and when I fetch her after school, she had BETTER bring a written apology from you showing that you understand just how wrong your reaction to this incident was. Otherwise, or if any of these people here suffer any consequences for today´s incident, I will make sure that you will rue this day for the rest of your life.”
Well, that and a nice letter to Chris Thompson saying he´s sorrow to hear how the shirt incident worked out for him, and that if he thinks there´s anything Todd could do to help him get his job back, he´ll do it. After all it seems perfectly clear now that Thompson wasn´t fired primarily for letting the shirt incident happen, but for disagreeing with the principal´s decision that Keisha was the culprit, and for being right about it.
I think Mr. Thompson has a good chance with a wrongful termination suit there. Seriously, is this principal trying to get sued?
I find it rather ironic that the principal was so worried about getting a lawsuit over the incidents that have been happening with Selkie, yet he obviously made a decision that could very well lead to him getting one after all. I foresee Todd suing him for all that he’s got and someone else will step up as principal (maybe Mina?)
This will definitely be coming up in the PTA meeting. . .
Urge to kill, rising.
Simpsons, ftw. 😛
He’s following what I assume is law for his district. While I don’t agree that she should be suspended for defending herself, I do agree that she should be suspended for participating in an event that was known to them to be prohibited. All of the students involved should be suspended.
Being suspended for defending herself is ridiculous though.
“Okay. Okay. You make a valid point, Hobbit. That’s fair, cool. Come on, Selkie, you’re suspended for the rest of the week. We will respect his decision he made while on his date with Mrs. Brown if he respects my decision to bring a lawsuit down on him.”
Dave: You really need to implement some sort of Facebook-style ‘like’ system, or reddit-style upvotes/downvotes, just for comments like this. If I could upvote it, I would.
I’ve thought the same thing a few times, myself. I like the idea of being able to upvote posts, but I also dislike downvoting in general. On the League of Legends forums for example, I’ve seen a lot of threads get closed down by people downvoting just because it’s an unpopular opinion or something posted a lot (X champion sucks, is op,etc). I don’t like the idea of people having the power to shut down someone elses thread/post/comment. You could probably make a point that it’s the community setting it’s own behavior standards, but I’ve always felt it creates an atmosphere of homogeny; post ideas we agree with or get shut down, noob.
A Like system might not be a bad idea, if I can suss it out. An add-on maybe…
Well how about a like or upvote button exclusively? Good and insightful comments stand out more while unpopular ones remain neutral and can’t get beaten to death by anyone who disapproves-or people trying to be jerks.
I’m not sure if it’s even possible, but it’d be nice.
Sounds to me like Todd has a lawsuit that he would have a hard time losing… with witnesses.
When I was thirteen, I got my one of braces punched out by a chick. I couldn’t remember the offender’s name but she was on my bus, so my vice principal’s brilliant idea was to come on the bus before we left school for the day and make me point her out in front of the whole entire bus. The second we pulled away from the curb I got the crap beaten out of me by another girl…but I didn’t fight back because I knew I’d get in trouble for fighting too. The next day the incident was reported by me, my mom, and the bus driver…leaving the offender to get suspender for the last four days of the school year. I however, got kicked off the bus for the remainder of the school year because while I got beaten up I happened to say the b word.
Needless to say, charges were pressed against my attacker and my mother complained to both the principal and the superintendent. That was my last year of Junior High, but I heard that the Vice Principal who had suspended my bus privileges for such a minor offense while I was being attacked was terminated. Yay Karma!
Looks like the school board will need to find a new principal
Why is Selkie being suspended such a bad thing? My kids got suspended for missing school and I would request they get an in school suspension so that the kids didn’t regard it as official permission to miss even more school but the school never worked with me on it. However my kids were a lost cause and never even figured out what they were doing to be suspended. If they had, they would have started doing those things deliberately! As it was they drifted in and out of school according to if they could stand going or not and suspensions never made any difference.
I know some places make a big deal about suspensions going on your permanent record but I would think that kids in Selkie’s age range would not be so concerned yet about the possibility of being rejected by a mediocre college. Do ordinary kids really feel a sense of disgrace for being suspended? Asking because I never meet ordinary kids.
Whether or not the kid gets upset depends on the kid, of course–but most normal kids generally do not like being singled out for any reason.
In this age range I’m not sure it’s much of a punishment because missing schoolwork and affecting grades really doesn’t matter. I think the idea is more that the parents will punish the kid for screwing up, and removing the kid stops the disruption they were causing.
In my opinion it’s a pretty stupid punishment at this age–ineffective as discipline for the child, and not doing anything to solve the behavior problem for the school.
err, panel 4, two g’s in aggressor…
Similar thing happened to a close friend of mine about four years back. It was our freshman year in high school. He was hanging out with our friends at lunch playing hackey-sack. Harley (my friend) went to kick, and missed the hackey and almost hit one of the other guys playing, Tyler. (Tyler had transferred from a school in california back in Jr. High and had a history of a short temper.)
About ten minutes before the end of the day (over four hours later), out of nowhere Tyler hits Harley and has him on the ground bleeding and is pounding on the back of his head. Harley didn’t even have time to get his hands up. By the time Tyler was finally off of him, his skin had split from the corner of his eye up to his eyebrow and was in need of stitches. It took 18. The school suspended them both.
Here’s where it gets good.
The school then went out of their way to start a lawsuit against both boys. Tyler settled, Harley’s family didn’t. Testimony was taken and, thankfully, Harley got off scot-free. After the judge basically said, “Well, I think you did hit him first, but there isn’t any tangible evidence to support it, so I can’t do anything.”
The tl;dr version: yes, I’ve had an experience with this same bureaucratic bull…oney and was lucky to see the victim didn’t get as screwed as they could have. But it still sucked.
This little tidbit popped up today in another web comic I read. Just had to share it. http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2013/06/20/0492-yuna-has-the-atom-bomb/
Ah ha ha ha. Oh, Yuna. So much expulsion in your future, child.
Based on the first panel of the last comic, and the first panel of this one, I’d say Papa Bear’s about ready to bring the claws out … and, I gotta say, I don’t blame him one bit.
Upon reflection, Selkie _could_ have said she was just struggling, and her foot hit Truck by accident … but it’s probably too late for that now.
I don’t know where the principal falls in under all this, but I am pretty sure most schools are union shops. I’d be filing a serious grievance about this to either the union president or the school board.
So here’s the lack of logic in that statement: if Selkie were being choked instead of shaken, and she were about to pass out, or worst-case scenario, DIE, she should wait until the ADULTS reach her. BUT, if she gives Truck a kick, she’ll F***ING LIVE?!?!?!?!
I am sorry. This lack of logic just pisses me off way too much. That’s like punishing her for wanting to live!
that’s basically when what it comes down too, really. “How dare you fight for your survival.”
How dare I defend myself, indeed.
This line of thinking doesn’t stop at school. It’s infected our day to day life.
THE PRINCIPLE SAID DAMN IN FRONT OF A CHILD
AND WASN’T CENSORED
Yep. I feel like (1) “Damn” isn’t much worse than “crap”, which Selkie says all the time, and (B) the pictograph censors make it “funny swearing”, which wouldn’t be appropriate.
Let’s just put it this way… remember the crossed gender symbols?
If I were Todd, they’d be flying at a rate of about once every third word, and probably uncensored, even with Selkie there.
In my opinion, Todd is out of character in the first panel; he seems too together and aware for name calling based on someone’s physical stature.
Todd may be calling Principal Sackville-Baggins small-minded. Remember, he says “tiny little hobbit mind“. I admit I first thought it was because Principal Sackville-Baggins is short, but it could be that Todd is saying, “Your mind is the size of a hobbit!”
Why is there an assumption that Hobbits have small minds?
…might be the stuff they smoke all the time…
*hides before angry hobbit defenders get here*
I know, right? I understand the trail of thought, but to claim his mind is as small as a hobbit implies there’s three feet to it, much less three centimeters! This page does a great disservice to tiny hobbit minds everywhere.
The worst kind of manager is the kind that is insecure, bullheaded, and refuses to listen to those who know more about a topic than they do. Sadly, this is also the most common kind of manager. It is too bad that positions of power do not yield the wisdom to wield that power responsibly.
Even worse, upon looking, these teachers would be able to truthfully tell him:
A. That Selkie never called to them directly for help and
B. That Selkie never showed any sign of seeing them.
I had to look it up to verify that, but that only affirmed that there was no recognition of the presence of the teachers.
That may well be, but unfortunately this principal seems to be the type who’ll say, “I’ve made up my mind, now don’t confuse me with the facts.”
The worst type of bully in the world: The Bully Principal.
Gah! Just because the teachers were close enough to intervene DOESN’T MEAN she knew they were there! It’s still cut – and – dry self-defense.
Although, she might need to be home sick for a day or so anyhow. :-/
To quote Gilbert and Sullivan “Let the punishment fit the crime,” which not happening here. This is what happens when you enact a ‘One size fits all’ school policy with no room for interpretation of extenuating circumstances. These policies are usually adopted by bureaucrats terrified of lawsuits and wanting to be politically correct. Suspending a child for accidentally nibbling his PopTart in what was interpreted by a teacher in the shape of a gun exemplifies this sort of officious idiocy.
It’s a little absurd to asume that the principal is stupid just because he’s perpetuating an injustice. He probably doesn’t want to be fired over one little girl’s suspension, eh? Getting fired is a pretty big deal, particularly for a man of his age. Why would he get fired? Because of rules handed down from above? Rules created and even legislated to be not the just solution, but the “best fit” given various risks and the heterogeneous skillsets – to put it kindly – of the employees the school system can afford to hire.
I’m not saying he doesn’t go off an ego trip to maintain his authority, but I’m also saying that the teachers in question may not know enough about his situation to help him find a collaborative solution. I’m sure he too often sees his subordinates as combatants rather than collaborators.
After all – everyone has an ego. Everyone gets defensive. Everyone gets insecure. It’s hard, for example, to have subordinates who know more than you do about anything, because they may spin that superiority in one domain into a sense of superiority in every domain, leading them to undermine your authority – authority you need to maintain if you don’t want to get fired. Too often management is like parenting a kid who won’t ever love you.
Besides, everyone tends to like to feel right, particularly when feeling an intense emotion. Everyone has a “bias blindspot,” and everyone tends to want to localize blame on a single person, even when doing so ignores that person’s context. If we scapegoat an individual we don’t have to face how terrible even the “optimum” system can be in this imperfect world.
It’s really too bad that he doesn’t see his subordinates as collaborators, however, because with a smart group like that they could figure something out.
This seems like the perfect place to bring up an irrelevant, semi-conspiratorial theroy about why Selkie is in the human world.
Global warming.
As water gets warmer, its capacity for dissolved oxygen decreases. Global warming is increasing the temperature of the lakes, causing it to become harder for Selkie’s people to breathe (not that the smog on the surface is a lot better), and so they are beginning a slow exodus.
The children are being evacuated first, since children are more adaptable than adults, they will seem less of a threat to the surface community, and the adults still underwater are presumably studying possible alternatives to abandoning their homes.
Selkie may have been a test case. The doctor we saw was probably a ‘first experiment’, since an adult could assess the surface culture and report back to their own with greater accuracy than a child, whose perceptions of what’s important are a touch more … self-focused.
Actually the presence of the teachers is irrelevant if Selkie didn’t see them considering she was been shaken and was delirious with cold, I don’t think she knew they were there at the time.
Prat.
Tolerance is Awesome! …as long as you think, talk, look and act EXACTLY HOW WE TELL YOU TO.
I believe Zero Tolerance policies are the same as Zero Intelligence. If the person who is paid 6 figures to make hard choices throws up their hands and says even once, “Those are the rules and I can’t make an exception” then they should be fired and the janitor should read the rule book every time a decision is needed. I am sick of these idiots being protected from doing the right thing by the fear of legal action.
Firstly, for the work they do, they don’t deserve 6 figures (my brother’s a teacher in FL so I’m a bit biased). Secondly, zero tolerance policies are in place for two reasons: 1) faulty kid logic of (tu quo que/they got away with it so why can’t I?) and 2) idiot parents that will invariably try to claim that their child (the aggressor) is some how a victim even in cases where their child was 100% to blame.
You know… suppose that instead of being shaken and forced out of her protective gear (as it were), this were a more obvious crime-in-progress. Say rape, or being stabbed. Does the fact that you see people running toward you from some distance away mean you have to go limp and just let the rest of the attack continue, secure in the knowledge that at some point in the future it will stop?
Especially with an out-of-control person like this guy… there’s no way I would let him keep hurting me if I had a way I could see to stop it.
I totally relate to this. When I was in elementary school I had a similar incident happen, and almost got suspended too. (I was the victim) The only reason I didn’t was because my parents fought against it and I didn’t have a teacher close. Poor Selkie, getting punished for defending yourself sucks. 🙁
“I’d like to hire you, really, but I’m a bit concerned about your past records. Why were you let go from your last position?”
“Because I didn’t leave an entire class unsupervised to follow an eight-year-old girl into the bathroom. Another girl stole her shirt while she was in there.”
” … Welcome aboard.”
Truthfully speaking, his career is probably ruined forever, but really, how was he supposed to react when Selkie needed to go flush her gills?
I ca only hope that principal gets his just deserts in the near future. Perhaps permanent unpaid leave to Siberia or something.
He sucks as a princible.
Oh… So it’s THAT kind of person in charge. Well then… :/