Bullying is Expensive !

Court awards teen $250,000 from school
By Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A Kansas teenager was awarded $250,000 Thursday in his federal lawsuit claiming that he was so badly bullied by classmates that he quit school.
Dylan Theno, now 18, claimed Tonganoxie school district officials knew about the taunting and did nothing to stop it.
The district said it dealt with all the incidents Theno reported, noting that the harassment stopped before Theno dropped out. He has since earned a GED and plans to enroll in community college this fall.
The lawsuit, heard in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., sought $700,000. Theno claimed the harassment deprived him of an education.
Theno’s attorney, Arthur Benson, said he is unaware of any other verdicts in same-sex, student-on-student harassment cases in federal court won by a student.
The lawsuit was filed under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. The verdict is important, Benson said, in that the law has been used mainly to curb discrimination in athletics programs on the basis of gender.
“That is what this case is about,’’ Benson said. “Dylan Theno was for years called very ugly terms based on what was the stereotypical expectations of the masculine student, and Dylan Theno did not meet those expectations.’’
Theno testified that a rumor started in seventh grade by another student that he was gay continued into high school, where classmates called him derogatory names for homosexual men. Theno testified that he is not gay.
The school district’s attorney, J. Stephen Pigg, of Topeka, said in closing arguments that name-calling and crude comments are something that boys — and men — do all the time.
“Guys think things are funny that ladies don’t think are funny,’’ Pigg said. “In the seventh grade that is enhanced. ... It just happens. It is just part of the joking and kidding of seventh-grade boys.’’
Pigg also said administrators addressed taunting that Theno told them about but didn’t suspend the offenders as Theno and his parents wanted.
Groups working to curb violence in public schools settings identify the reluctance of school officials to take action as a major obstacle.
source: http://www.dallasvoice.com/articles/dispArticle.cfm?Article_ID=6484