Thoughts on the whole Karen Klein thing

[lollylegs]

Thank you guys, after reading so many articles absolutely condemning her for buying cars for her grandchildren (which I personally think is a lovely gesture), you've all redeemed my faith in humanity.

[EMuir]

The money was a gift to her, and the purpose as far as I read was so that she could retire.  That was certainly enough to retire and be able to afford cars for her children! It was a gift. I'm just happy she didn't go on a gambling spree and lose it all, which she would have absolutely been able to do since the money was a GIFT to her.

[Moray]

I'm curious what an anti-bullying organization would use the money for.  If it's raising awareness, I would say this woman has already done her part.

Offering support and advice to victims?

Why would they need money to do that, is my question.

Trained professionals cost money.

Plus set-up, printing costs for posters/leaflets, phone costs, publicity.

Not to mention transportation costs for presenters to go to schools, community events, etc.; money to lobby local school boards to adopt the program/train teachers; the costs associated with operating an anti-bullying hotline. These things don't happen for free.

[Paper Roses]

Anyone who donated through the website had to see the ticker that displayed a running total of how much money had been collected at any given point during the time they were taking donations.  It was very clear that the original intention as to collect $5,000 to send her on a vacation, and that goal was reached very early on, yet obviously people kept contributing.  Now, we don't know if the people who contributed are the same ones who are criticizing her use of the money now, but if that's the case, I think they're way out of line since they had to know that the goal had been long passed, yet still contributed. 

As for uploading it to Youtube, well, I don't know if I'd call it "rude," necessarily.  Possibly insomuch as it may have been embarrassing to Karen Klein.  As for the bullies, I have a very difficult time sympathizing with any of them.

[stargazer]

Do bus drivers, for example, have the authority to pull the bus into a parking lot until all passengers are compliant? What could Karen Klein have done to change the situation? I imagine if she had simply parked the bus, every parent would have raised a hue and cry about her tardiness and her "inability to control the students a few hooligans".

Just a note, but she was not the bus driver, just the bus monitor.  So she had no ability to stop the bus in any case.

[Coralreef]

Ms. Klein was not the one collecting the money, someone else had the idea and put it into motion.  People were not coerced into giving some dollars to the site and they knew it was for Ms. Klein.  That people were generous to a fault is a good thing to see.  However, that money was never earmarked for anything other than giving it to Ms. Klein as a gift.  So, as far as I am concerned, she can give it, spend it, burn it, it's not my decision to make. 

The people complaining : probably the same ones who gripped that NASA sends a probe to Mars while children are starving, and they themselves would never give a penny to any cause, because "those bums just have to find a job!"  Their words, not mine. 

[aloe]

I'm glad all that money is going to her and whatever she does with it is OK with me.  I heard that it was one of the bullies who made the video.  I watched it for the first time last night and I was APPALLED.

I have a dim view of humanity in general and I admit I had violent, hateful thoughts against those boys, thoughts such as liking to see them hung from trees.

If you listen closely to the video, you will hear the most disgusting remarks, and in addition they threatened her bodily harm.

Karma is a B^#*h.  I heard they have received thousands of death threats and no matter if they grow up to become decent men, this will haunt and follow them forever.

[lollylegs]

As for uploading it to Youtube, well, I don't know if I'd call it "rude," necessarily.  Possibly insomuch as it may have been embarrassing to Karen Klein.  As for the bullies, I have a very difficult time sympathizing with any of them.

Oh no, of course I didn't mean was it rude to the bullies, I meant was it rude to Karen Klein.

I'm glad all that money is going to her and whatever she does with it is OK with me.  I heard that it was one of the bullies who made the video.  I watched it for the first time last night and I was APPALLED.

I have a dim view of humanity in general and I admit I had violent, hateful thoughts against those boys, thoughts such as liking to see them hung from trees.

If you listen closely to the video, you will hear the most disgusting remarks, and in addition they threatened her bodily harm.

Karma is a B^#*h.  I heard they have received thousands of death threats and no matter if they grow up to become decent men, this will haunt and follow them forever.

It's funny how this story has made me apalled at humanity, then proud of humanity, and then back to appalled again.  I don't say this often but I really kind of feel like the media built her up just to tear her down.

[AngelBarchild]

This whole situation is bothersome on so many levels.  This woman was a bus monitor, who's job it was to keep order on a bus of Jr. high school students. In a single isolated incident the students acted in a reprehensible manner, and should have been punished. My problem is that they should have been punished by her. That was her job, to make the children behave. She did not do that, instead she got very upset and sat in a corner and cried. For this she gets over half a million dollars.

Before I am deluged with anecdotal evidence about how there is nothing a bus monitor can do about it, I can give you equal evidence from my own child hood and my child's experience (who has been riding the school buss for years) that riding the bus is a privilege and children can and have been banned from riding the bus in the future, forcing their parents to find another way to get their child to school.

My husband is bullied on a daily basis. He is a Corrections officer at a maximum security prison. If the things you heard those Jr. high kids say upsets you then the things he hears every day would leave you weeping for hours. That is on top of the sometimes threats, sometimes very real physical violence.  No one wants to pay him half a million dollars for the abuse he suffers. In fact people want to pay him less, because they don't want to pay for prisons.

I can not, for the life of me, understand why people have reacted the way they have. The only reason that I can come up with is because she is a woman. I wonder if it had been a man in her place would anyone have cared?

[Horace]

This whole situation is bothersome on so many levels.  This woman was a bus monitor, who's job it was to keep order on a bus of Jr. high school students. In a single isolated incident the students acted in a reprehensible manner, and should have been punished. My problem is that they should have been punished by her. That was her job, to make the children behave. She did not do that, instead she got very upset and sat in a corner and cried. For this she gets over half a million dollars.

Before I am deluged with anecdotal evidence about how there is nothing a bus monitor can do about it, I can give you equal evidence from my own child hood and my child's experience (who has been riding the school buss for years) that riding the bus is a privilege and children can and have been banned from riding the bus in the future, forcing their parents to find another way to get their child to school.

My husband is bullied on a daily basis. He is a Corrections officer at a maximum security prison. If the things you heard those Jr. high kids say upsets you then the things he hears every day would leave you weeping for hours. That is on top of the sometimes threats, sometimes very real physical violence.  No one wants to pay him half a million dollars for the abuse he suffers. In fact people want to pay him less, because they don't want to pay for prisons.

I can not, for the life of me, understand why people have reacted the way they have. The only reason that I can come up with is because she is a woman. I wonder if it had been a man in her place would anyone have cared?

I take it from your post that you have never been bullied as you think it was unreasonable of her to "sit in a corner and cry".  These were children, telling her that her family had committed suicide to get away from her.  That is not something she will ever forget and it is not something she should have to experience, even if her job is monitoring the students on her bus.  That's like saying it's a policeman's fault if he gets shot and killed by a criminal because it's his job so he should have expected it to happen. 

People have reacted to this because it was cruel and unfair, no-one should be treated like that, regardless of their career choice.  I'm glad this much fuss has been made about the situation because it has brought bullying out into the open again.  Not all bullies are schoolchildren; they are bosses, spouses, parents, siblings.  Nowadays accusations of bullying can be taken far too lightly and this attitude needs to change, hopefully this event will help that happen.

[TurtleDove]

I think AngelBarchild makes some good points. People are cruel. But rewarding a victim mentality doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It's difficult to out into words but what I mean is that the message being sent, at least to me, is not that there are repercussions for bullying, but rather that you deserve to be rewarded if you are a victim. I think a much stringer message would be how to stand up for yourself and NOT be a victim. And in this case, to also be competent at your job. The kids were out of line, bu in my opinion the way the woman handled it was too. Understandable and explainable, sure, but not am ideal reaction at all, and not one that shines as a way to end bullying.

[RingTailedLemur]

Angel, have you worked with kids?  Badly behaved ones?

I have, and in my experience something like that doesn't come out of the blue.  It builds up, day after day - for weeks, months and years.  It tears you down.  The psychological aspect is tremendous and, in my experience, adults who admit they cannot cope and need help with behaviour management are rarely well-supported.  They are usually told they are incompetent and get no support or training.

Hiding and hoping no-one finds out is very common.

[TurtleDove]

RingTailedLemur, I am in no way supporting what the kids did, but that woman has no business being a bus monitor if she allows children to destroy her self esteem. Frankly, she IS incompetent to do her job. She shouldn't have been treated how she was, but she was not doing her job, especially if this was building up over months or years.

[camlan]

It would be interesting and useful to know what the rules for the bus monitors are in her school system. AngelBarchild refers to kids getting banned from the buses--which is easy to do some places and almost impossible to do in others.

In some areas, the bus monitor has a great deal of authority--they can report the children for acting out, bad language, disobeying rules. After a certain number of infractions, the kid is banned from the bus. In other areas, they can't do a single thing other than to tell a child to sit down. If the child doesn't sit, there is no other recourse. A lot depends on how the system is structured.

And kids know when the adult is powerless to enforce the rules, whether by their own personality or because they are hampered by the rules set in place by others. Some kids will still obey the rules, some will skirt the letter of the law and a few will press their advantage to the limit, which is what I think those kids on the bus did.

It's like anything else. If there are no consequences to breaking the rules, some people will learn that and break the rules all the time.

[Iris]

Victim blaming is ugly. Perhaps she didn't have the natural talent to control children, but when we get a colleague likethat we support them and create consequences. These kids obviously felt that there were not going to be consequences which tells me there was a systemic failure.

So what if she 'should' have controlled the children? The children should not have *needed* to be controlled in that way. It's NOT a prison it's a school bus. I bet prison guards and even teachers get a lot more training in dealing with this than this lady had. She may have been entirely capable of dealing with ordinary bad behaviour, which is all that should have been required for the job she had.