Week 5 Reflection - Justin, Maria Brown

So, just out of curiosity I chose to go through a couple scenarios with Justin (burnout) who walks into the lunchroom and sees "those meatheads" who clearly represent Jocks at his table taunting his friends. In one scenario the jocks start throwing food at them.  He goes to get a teacher in one scenario who basically shrugs it off and tells him to "ignore these silly little things".  This is a clear example of a jock terrorizing a burnout.  Because Jocks have better relationships with authority figures and are seen as school leaders they can, "basically do whatever I want because they just figure I'm doing something for the school.  And they know me, that I'm not going to get in trouble." (pg 115, Eckert). 

This scenario definitely speaks to the book regarding autonomy and how Jocks are given more freedoms as they have a sort of alliance with the authority figures (teachers, etc.)  Justin, a burnout, appropriately tells the teacher that he is being bullied by the Jocks, and the teacher essentially doesn't do anything and makes Justin seem like he's the one that is not responding appropriately. 

Unfortunately, we see this today.  I recently saw a news story about a kid who committed suicide after being bullied at school.  The parents didn't know about the extent of the bullying until after the fact but the school clearly did know about the bullying and did nothing.  This is unacceptable and is a clear example of authority figures backing up Jocks and giving them a level of autonomy that is clearly inappropriate. 

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