NY Girl Suspended for Making Anti-Bullying Video

[PlumpRump]

An anti-bullying video, created as part of a school project and posted of Facebook & YouTube, gets a New York area high school girl suspended for 5 days.

The high school freshman was suspended for five days after she created an anti-bullying video and Facebook page about a fictional girl who commits suicide says she tried to explain her work to school officials to no avail.

“I just created the video in order to raise awareness of the major issue that’s bullying,” 15-year-old Jessica Barba told Matt Lauer on TODAY. “I don’t understand why I’m being punished for it.”
Jessica made the six-minute video for a class at Longwood High School in Middle Island, N.Y. The assignment was to create a project about an important issue.

The video, posted on YouTube, tells the story of the fictional 12-year-old Hailey Bennett (played by Jessica), who lost her ****** at age 3, is ****** by her *** and is all alone after her only friend moves away. Hailey gets bullied at school daily, is mocked on her fake Facebook page, and ultimately, ends her life. The video and the Facebook page had disclaimers saying Hailey was a fictional character, according to TODAY.
A concerned parent saw Hailey’s Facebook page, which features an update saying “I wanna be dead,” and called the police, who contacted the school, according to TODAY. When Jessica was called to the assistant principal’s office, she said she was confronted with printouts that did not include her disclaimer. She tried to plead her case...

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Since the suspension, on or about May 15, the NY ALCU has gotten involved and, unsurprisingly, the girl has been reinstated and the suspension lifted from her record. Funny how her suspension was based on the claims that the video was a "distraction," and the suspension itself, once it had made national news, becomes the even bigger distraction. Maybe the Administrator(s) who suspended the girl should be suspended themselves for creating a distraction of such proportion in a learning environment?

Still, this really chaps my ass that we are so brain-dead as a society, and that had anyone taken the time to read the disclaimer about the video being fake, there never would have been an issue. The girl should have been given an A on the project for her creativeness, not suspended. What are we teaching these **** anymore?