We have yet another example of school administrators opposing a child over innocent behavior. We have followed the zero tolerance lunacy that has taken hold of schools across the country on guns and drugs where kids are suspended for finger guns or aspirin. We have seen that same blind, senseless application of rules regarding contacts between students including suspending teenagers seen exchanging a kiss. Now a six-year-old boy has been suspended for kissing a girl on the hand as a sexual harasser. That’s right, officials in Canon City, Colorado have nailed a six-year-old sexual harasser under its zero tolerance rules. Hunter Yelton admits that he has a crush on a girl at school and, during a reading group, he leaned over and kissed her on the hand.” That is when he was nailed as a serial harasser by the administrators at Lincoln School of Science and Technology in Canon City.
What is interesting is that the news reports indicate that the girl did not object to the kiss on the cheek. Of course, that is what all six-year-old sexual harassers say.
However, the school officials insist that sexual harassment is sexual harassment and this six-year-old’s sexual predatorial conduct will no longer be tolerated. Of course there is another possibility: that adults are taking their own issues and perceptions into schools and distorting innocent behavior. I have no problem with calling in the parents and raising the issue. However, a suspension for sexual harassment?
School officials insist that the boy has had disciplinary problems, but the use of a sexual harassment rule still seems bizarre and excessive. Yet, District superintendent Robin Gooldy stands by the suspension and insists that this is unwanted touching and that Hunter needed to be stopped.
The solution of these adults is to put sexual harassment on the record of a six-year-old boy. Once again, a kiss on the hand is less disturbing than the response of these supposed adults to a kiss on the hand. Even if you do not consider such a gestures as adolescent chivalry or innocent conduct, it is not sexual harassment by any reasonable definition of that word. From the interview below, I fail to see a budding serial harasser or porn star in the making. I see a kid who may need boundaries but that is the same problem that I see in the school administrators.
Here is the little harasser and the little harasser’s mother in a local interview:
Source:
The older brothers and sisters in that school district need to go to the next school board meeting. They need to eat a lot of pork and beans four hours before they go and hold in their gas. Then at the meeting they need to let go. This is a reason why parents home school their children. Johnny does not need to come marching home with a suspension slip on his sleeve. The article does have one mishap. He kissed her hand in one sentence and her cheek in another. As long is was not the cheek of her butt we are ok with it.
A principal of a school is the opposite of a pal. That pal spulling of the word is out of order. The Superintendent and Principal need to go run a prison. Oh, they already do. I was corrected by one of the dogs in the dogpac. My apologies.
If anyone is on the blog from Cannon city, Please go to your next school board meeting and demand an explanation. Likewise when this happens in your community. Do not let our schools get away with this crap.
I would have a hard time entrusting my children to such morons.
The person who initially made the decision to discipline the child under the school district’s sexual harassment policy was the principal, Tammy DeWolfe. Her justification was that this was the second kissing incident, the first having taken place in November (kiss on the cheek) and now this second kiss in December on the hand … both incidents involved the same two children. She could have disciplined the 6 year old under the school district’s misconduct policy but chose the sexual harassment policy route instead.
Superintendent Dr. Robin Gooldy supported DeWolfe’s decision but added that sexual harassment allegations are rare and when they do come up, it’s with older students.
The child’s mother, Jennifer Saunders, is quoted as saying, “The discipline is appropriate, for stepping out of personal boundaries. However, having sexual harassment on his record is completely inappropriate. He is 6 years old, and that is absolutely ridiculous for him to have ‘sexual harassment’ on his record, even it is (only on the district’s) record.” Her 6 year old son is now asking questions about what “sex” is, etc.
Given the fact that this 6 year old child could have been disciplined under the school district’s misconduct policy but that the principal chose instead to use the sexual harassment policy and was backed up in that choice by the superintendent, is, in my opinion, justification enough to follow OS’s suggestion that these school administrators be given a battery of psychological tests. An adult’s decision to interpret a display of affection by a 6 year old as sexual in nature needs to be investigated vigorously. Such an investigation is not only appropriate but necessary.
http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/news/canoncity-local-news/ci_24697729/lincoln-school-science-technology-student-suspended-after-kissing
When my son was in the second grade, he and another boy, a boy with an older brother to learn from, took their pants down to sit on a swing so that the girls that were watching would not sit in it, cuz it was now grossed out. They were taken to the principals office, I met with the principal and my son and we explained that this could be seen to be offensive in a way other than ‘gross’. There was no way that we could explain the sexual issues. There were and are none. This is not sexual. A second grader is not sexual.
However, I am glad that the principal had the good sense to limit the reaction to a lecture and simply make sure that my son understood that it was not allowed.
This event of kissing the girl’s hand and the logging of the six year old with a sexual offense is so far from stupid that it should result in a judicial inquiry and the loss of the job of the school official(s) that made the determination. This zero tolerance idea is only permissible when common sense is included. Talk to the boy and explain about personal space.
If I were the father of this kid, I would be hard pressed not to be waiting for the offending official for a meeting of an old fashioned kind. Who could condone this happening to their child. This is beyond a curiosity. It is outrageous and a threat to the child. This will be tagged to his record regardless of what happens from now on.
The US is, sometimes, an extremely stupid country.
Now had the boy in question kissed another boy, those same school officials would have been celebrating sexual diversity! Political correctness is a plague on humanity.
My sister’s son was suspended at the same age for “sexual fondling”.. And was further required to attend sexual therapy! He was on the playground and needed to use the restroom and began to push on his “privates” in an aid not to wet his pants. The school said he was fondling himself and suspended him for three days. Then my sister received a court order for her son to attend sexual counseling! This story and the above reinforces one of the many reasons I am proud to have made the choice to homeschool.
I wonder if the this situation would have had a different outcome if the girl had kissed the boy.
Absolutely ridiculous! I really have to wonder how safe it is to put these people in charge of a school full of children. The potential harm to the small boy (by the act of kissing a hand, being labeled as something aberrant) was probably far worse than the potential harm to the little girl.
What Gene and OS and Darren said already. This school administration needs to go back to school and learn some common sense.
Oh my! I, too, was a “kisser” in first grade! I even gave all the other children Valentine’s cards and professed my “love.” I apologize to the little boys I cornered and then kissed!!!
Nal….. I think you’re right…. I had read this with amusement….. What gets into these educators heads…. This is crazy and they should be sued for misfeasance…..
Thanks Gene…. I’m amazed at the stupid that exist….. Seems common sense…. Well…. It’s lacking,…
I didn’t think this story would last until the weekend.
In the 1950’s as a female 4 year old asperger, I disliked being “atttacked “by a kissing bandit, a four year old male with romance on his mind. I cried and struggled to make him get out of my personal space (the lingo is irritating , I know, but sometimes it’s very relevant ). It would not have been in anyone’s interest to severely chastise the boy with a visit from the local police with a view to giving him a sexual predator record , The child was quite good natured and charming . Very young kids can learn what’s socially permissible from their classmated reactions and from a talking to by his parents. .
Repetitive adult predators, however, should realize they’ll be accused of sexual and/or social harrassment once they’re told they’re invading a person’s privacy and intruding on personal choices .
P.S. I learned to like the kissing bandit behavior when I was older, though!
Do children have advocates at school any longer?
If you want to find for institutionalized injustice in the world you only need to look as far as many schools like this in America.
When people are subjected to different sets of due process, that is one group has rights and the other doesn’t. This is what happens. Especially when the state has compulsary authority to require the child to be in school then takes away his or her rights. Yet the school administrators claim that they provide review processes to the student to contest inane charges such as this, it is really a sham especially in light of where the principal makes many statements where the student is automatically guilty from the start.
There is absolutely no cause whatever to support a sexual harassment charge against a six year old. For one there is no culpability for someone of this age because there is no concept of sexuallity in someone that old. They are legally incapable of committing criminal or civil liabilities for themselves. And for this child even if he was somehow cuplable the girl had not objected so where in the ordinary sense did this constitute sexual harassment?
But, the mindset of these kind of school officials is such that they believe they are beyond repproach even if the supreme court rules against them, adding they were sleighted by the system because they know what is best and how dare they be questioned. Public scorn is often the only way to correct these people, since the system is so overwhelmingly against the rights of the students.
I wonder if the NSA is tapping his Fischer Price play-school plastic phone.
Shock and Awe plus overwhelming force doesn’t seem like a reasonable strategy for 6 year olds.
As a psychologist, I have to wonder….in all seriousness….just what kind of sexual hangups the school administrators have. A lot of what Freud theorized about sexual repression has been largely discounted these days, but on some of it, he must have been right. I would love to give those school administrators a battery of psychological tests.
Including a test for common sense.
On another thread, Anonymously Yours asked . . .
“1, December 10, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Does blowing a kiss amount to assault if the person to receives it does so unwillingly or unwittingly…..Or it misses the intended target and hits someone else…. A sexual assault…..”
AY, I guess this answers your rhetorical question for the jurisdiction of Carson City, Colorado.
I have something Superintendent Gooldy and the school admins can kiss.
It’s not a hand but it does have a cheek.
Little kids often go through a “kissy phase”. You know why? Because humans do that. Seriously, are you all just that bad at your jobs that you don’t realize that?