Girl Gets Detention For Hugging Friends - Where Students Can't Hug (Merged)

[Pale Rider]

Girl Gets Detention For Hugging Friends



By Georgina Gustin
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
11/06/2007

MASCOUTAH — A 13-year-old junior high school student was given two days of detention after school officials spotted her hugging friends after school last Friday.
Megan Coulter, an eighth-grade student at Mascoutah Middle School, was hugging her friends goodbye after school Friday when vice principal, Randy Blakely, saw her and told her she would receive two after-school detentions.

Blakely had previously warned Coulter that she was in violation of the school's policy on public displays of affection after she was seen hugging a student at a football game.

The school's policy says that “displays of affection should not occur on the campus at any time.”

Coulter's mother, Melissa Coulter, says she has requested to speak with the School Board at its next meeting, and is mystified about the punishment leveled at her daughter.

Mascoutah Superintendent Sam McGowen said today that the district's policy helps prevent misunderstandings and unwelcome expressions of affection.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisnews/story/32B579E2975B8BA08625738B007B4E1B?OpenDocument

[Pale Rider]

I have mixed feelings about this. I think the only way I can side with this is if the girl is a lesbian, and she goes around hugging other girls just to cop a cheap feel and the school knows it and is trying to put a stop to it. If that ISN'T the case, then this is another example of PC run amok. What little girls DON'T hug each other? I saw plenty of it when I was in school and no one thought anything of it.

[LiberalNation]

Yeah all PDA (public displays of affection) are banned at my school. You can draw dentention for hugging and whatever but most teachers don't enforce it.

[Hagbard Celine]

I support this ban on chest-to-chest contact. That girl should keep her big, swollen, sweater kittens to herself. It's distracting for school-age boys to have to deal with all these scandalous girls rubbing their big, bouncing milk-jugs up against them all the time. Boys need to concentrate on their studies, not on Susie-Q's enormous, soft hooter-knockers bouncing around in front of them all day. They need to be thinking about pie-charts, not hair pie. They need to stay away from those delectably titilating fun-bags, stop staring at those pert, jiggling racks of lamb and pay attention in class!

[truthmatters]

Oh those crazy liberals in Saint Louis.

[darin]

She didn't get detention for hugging her friends. She got detention for breaking the rules.

[gcianfrani]

Yeah, or likewise, girls might get pregnant by way of mitosis if a strapping boy presses up too close with his meaty, bulging, donkey pole colliding into her hair pie. Might be verrrrrrry dangerous. Slippery slope, I say.


I support this ban on chest-to-chest contact. That girl should keep her big, swollen, sweater kittens to herself. It's distracting for school-age boys to have to deal with all these scandalous girls rubbing their big, bouncing milk-jugs up against them all the time. Boys need to concentrate on their studies, not on Susie-Q's enormous, soft hooter-knockers bouncing around in front of them all day. They need to be thinking about pie-charts, not hair pie. They need to stay away from those delectably titilating fun-bags, stop staring at those pert, jiggling racks of lamb and pay attention in class!

[Hagbard Celine]

Yeah, or likewise, girls might get pregnant by way of mitosis if a strapping boy presses up too close with his meaty, bulging, donkey pole colliding into her hair pie. Might be verrrrrrry dangerous. Slippery slope, I say.

Mm, yes. I concur. It can be very slippery down there, err, I mean on that slope. Mm. Yes.

[avatar4321]

stupid rule. i feel bad for the girl. but it is a rule.

[dan]

Yeah... really stupid rule. It's not like human contact is an important part of adolescent development or anything.

[Pale Rider]

stupid rule. i feel bad for the girl. but it is a rule.

I agree. Stupid rule. Funny how we didn't see hugging as a problem thirty years ago. Oh wait... that was before moron liberals and PC.

[LiberalNation]

Yeah we have strict PDA rules at our school but they are rarely enforced. The occasional prick teacher who will tell you to stop holding hands or someones arm walking down the hall but that's about it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20071115/us_time/wherestudentscanthug

[quote]Megan Coulter, a Mascoutah, Ill., eighth-grader, served two after-school detentions last week. Her offense? Hugging two friends and therefore violating the Mascoutah Middle School's ban on public displays of affection.

Coulter's case drew dozens of newspaper headlines and landed her on NBC's Today Show. But it also illustrates a key challenge facing America's schools: When is a hug inappropriate - or "extreme," as its been dubbed by some administrators? And, more broadly, how far should schools go in policing the behavior of a generation that often takes its social cues from Paris Hilton and Britney Spears?


Student-on-student public displays of affection (PDAs) have long been problematic for school administrators and parents. Experts say anti-PDA policies have existed for nearly two decades, although it's not known how many schools and school districts have imposed such rules. In 1999, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling held schools responsible for creating environments free of harassment among students; that decision then led many lawsuit-averse administrators to ban most forms of student contact - except, of course, for high-contact sports like football and wrestling. Among the most extreme policies is in Vienna, Va., where the Kilmer Middle School has a blanket "No Contact" rule that bans even high-fives. The Fossil Hill Middle School in Fort Worth, Texas, has banned students from hugging and holding hands. Earlier this year, the Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park, Illinois, banned hugs.


Other schools have a broad ban on "inappropriate displays of affection," or IPDAs. Proponents say it gives school administrators more discretion in interpreting what constitutes "inappropriate" behavior. Yet that same discretion potentially exposes administrators to accusations of unfairly targeting, say, a Latina for braiding a friend's hair, or for showing favoritism by failing to reprimand the football team's quarterback who playfully smacks a teammate's back after a win.


Practical considerations - like hallway traffic control - are behind some of these no-contact measures. For example, at Iowa City, Iowa's South East Junior High School, girls who hadn't seen each other for an entire 42-minute class often stopped to hug each other in hallways during the four-minute break between classes. The hugging clogged the 700-student school's hallways. So Deb Wretman, the principal, developed a "hands-off, or handshake" slogan to limit greetings to a handshake. (She is loath to call it a "policy," and points out that "you won't find anything in our handbook that refers to 'no hugs' or 'public displays of affection.'") While there's no penalty for "violating the slogan," Wretman says the effort has significantly reduced hallway congestion.

More at link

[bullypulpit]

Political correctness run amok. One can only hope though, that they aren't related to junk totin' stick figure, Anne Coulter.

[stephanie]

Yeah but...I thought that was what Political Correctness was ALL ABOUT...


I guess you can't blame this on us so called RIGHT WING Extremist's conservatives who was constantly calling for the government and the PC to stay out of ore lives..


Just wait until your children have to say a pledge of allegiance to the Government....instead to the country United State,that our ancestors fought and died for...

Enjoy...this is political correctness, this is multiculturalism......according to you all we are all different and we should not pledge allegiance to one flag......this is what you all want...

Libration...you of all people should be happy...then you can wave that burning flag in everybody's faces with your children standing at your feet....:cheers2:

[darin]

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