Criminals coming through the haze
At last count some 34 Manitoba high school students were suspended this year for thinking that whacking other kids with hockey sticks or spraying them with assorted kitchen liquids was some sort of joyous rite of passage.
Because it happened at the beginning of the school year, it was referred to as hazing. Had these buffoons gone hunting for vulnerable students three months from now, it would be called criminal – assault, perhaps, or assault with a weapon.
The law makes no mention of exceptions for something called hazing.
In fact, two students in Burlington, Ont., were charged last month with assault with a weapon after paddling six Grade 9 students with goalie sticks in some kind of traditional hazing ritual. It seems to be an open question why police weren’t called in the local incidents.
It’s fitting that all this should have happened when it did, a period when boorish behaviour by a few public officials sent commentators rushing to their computers to bemoan the death of civility.
There was rapper Kanye West barging onto the stage of an awards ceremony to belittle a 19-year-old winner, there was a U.S. Congressman shouting at the President during an address and tennis player Serena Williams berating a lowly line judge and threatening to stuff a tennis ball down her throat.
They got their share of criticism, but they also got their share of rewards.
Kanye West appeared on the first edition of the new Jay Leno show the next night, helping it attract 18 million viewers, far more than was expected. Congressman Joe Wilson quickly hauled in more than $1 million in political donations and became a hero to that fringe who live out where the buses don’t run.
Serena Williams ended up on talk shows where she used the time to plug her newly-released book. Oh, she was also fined $10,000; a tough lump for someone who earned more than $25 million over the past 10 years. Most line judges earn minimum wage and don’t get on Good Morning America.
Some sportswriters went so far as to laud Williams for being the first woman to show the same “fiery” spirit and “passion” shown by some abusive male tennis players in years past. And perhaps they dream of a society in which there are just as many female serial killers. Equality, at last.
It wasn’t much different than some of the responses the Free Press received online about the hazing suspensions, many from people who turn off higher brain functions after putting on their Caps Lock.
One, blasting the suspensions, called some of the hazing incidents “good clean fun.” No doubt they would welcome being hit in the head with a water balloon or spanked with a hockey stick on their way to work.
No, bullying isn’t really good clean fun for those on the receiving end. Suspensions are the least school divisions should be doing to show that, despite what doesn’t happen to some public figures, vulgar and boorish behaviour has consequences in a civil society.
Perhaps one or two of them might even turn into politicians or sports stars or musicians who develop a more keen sense of respect for others than an overarching sense of entitlement for themselves.
The court in the Normandy town of Lisieux handed down the fine over the March 2007 incident in the nearby town of Houlgate.
