The video of bus monitor Karen Klein being cruelly bullied, by verbal abuse, by school children has gone viral since it was posted on youtube. I haven’t watched it. It goes for 10 minutes. I have seen someone tweet that they made it to 4 minutes before they had to turn it off. So be warned if you choose to watch it, it is bad.
In response, someone started a fundraising page on Indiegogo to raise $5000 so Karen Klein could take a nice holiday somewhere. It has now raised in excess of $US275 000, so she should be able to go somewhere really nice. I think this is a great way to say to someone ‘bullying is not on’ and ‘we support you.’ Ms Klein has said she doesn’t want the children involved to face criminal charges.
“They’ve received death threats,” Greece Police Captain Steve Chatterton said on Thursday. “Their families have been threatened. We have custody of one of their mobile phones, and he had over 1000 missed calls and 1000 text messages threatening him. And he’s 13 years old. That must stop.”
What sort of message are we sending to people if we, as a society, just become a bigger bully?
I got to about 2 minutes. The way those kids taunt and tear at her is seriously revolting.
And then you read down the page about 1000 threatening text messages sent to someone who is THIRTEEN YEARS OLD and you’re revolted all over again from a completely different angle.
Sorry to butt in again – the other thing that makes me slightly nauseous is the thought that news sites like the Age feature the story prominently at least partially because they think people – no sorry, my brain just melted.
The trouble with this kind of shittiness is that it makes you suspect everybody’s motives. I was going to say the Age ran it because they thought some of their readers might be entertained by it. ut I don’t know….
I think I’ll just shut up.
I think the Age ran it because they thought that people would watch it and tell other people about it and blog about it…yeah guilty as charged. I just find the fact that she still feels sympathy for the kids amazing. She must be one special lady.
How someone can think the way to stop kids bullying others is to send them death threats I don’t know.
Re: death threats to children – what do you expect from a country that actually applies the death penalty for crimes done as a child?
What I don’t understand about that situation is I would have thought a bus monitor would have the ability to discipline children (at the very least refer them to school authorities for punishment if they misbehave). If they can’t stop themselves from being bullied how do they stop other children from being bullied or from children acting in a dangerous manner on the bus?
Chris – I think you would find the same thing here- anonymous bullying is not a specifically US problem.
I just read a job description for a bus monitor in the US – it sounds horrible – the description says the temperature in the bus will often be in excess of 100 degrees, they will often have to shout to make themselves heard, plus this: “The worker is subject to atmospheric conditions. One or more of the following conditions affect the
respiratory system or the skin, fumes, odors, mists, gases or poor ventilation.”
And all for the princely sum of $9.50 per hour.
Polybius – anonymous bullying? Yes. But hundreds or thousands of threats via voicemail/text to a kids phone which are not even vaguely anonymous?
btw that job description seems amazingly honest! Sounds a bit like they’re trying to cover themself so there is less chance they will be sued.
Chris – it’s a very fulsome job description. There’s a bit where they describe every possible physical movement the bus monitor may need to make.
It’s two pages long.