The Other Side of the Bullied Bus Monitor Incident

**Warning – in this blog post, I will be referring to teenage bullies as monsters. If you find that offensive, I would suggest you stop reading now as I'm making no apologies for that classification.**

When I first heard the news about Karen Klein, the middle school bus monitor from New York, I was horrified and disgusted. If you haven't heard, she was on the job when middle school students began verbally assaulting her, using every cruel phrase in the book, mocking everything from her looks to her dead family members. It was the most sickening pure hate spewing out of the mouths of those that truly didn't know the national incident they were creating. I felt bad for her, and was excited to learn that a fund was set up to send her on vacation. It seemed to be a sweet gesture towards an innocent victim. That fund has now raised upwards of $600,000 dollars. That is a nice financial end to a horrifying incident. Or is it? Let's take a look at this from a different point of view, one that didn't set in with me until taking the time to really let this incident percolate.

Now, I want to be completely clear, I am in no way defending the little monsters who bullied the bus monitor. They deserve to be publicly humiliated, harshly punished, and the parents of said monsters should be the only ones more ashamed than the perpetrators. That aside, if you have seen any of the actual footage of the encounter (it is one of the hardest things to watch), it becomes clear that not only was Karen Klein not qualified to be in the position of bus monitor, but she did nothing productive to diffuse the situation which got completely out of hand. Her quick spiral into letting them victimize her sadistically empowered the teenagers to transform into the vicious monsters we see when watching the captured footage.

Don't forget, Karen Klein is a paid public employee whose job is to monitor the school bus and help to avoid incidents just like the one that is now landing her in a cash windfall. If this were an innocent bystander riding a city bus and this happened, my opinion would be entirely different.  This wasn't her first day on the job either – she obviously did not have the respect of the students who she had been monitoring for three years. She didn't do her job properly (and possibly was unable to) and is now getting rewarded for it. That doesn't sit well with me.

If a police officer on security detail were to ignore a robbery they saw taking place, only to end up shot by the thief, should we reward him/her? There are endless other appropriate analogies. A job description for a school bus monitor position lists “maintain discipline” as the number one responsibility. I don't think we should make a martyr out of someone who was not able to do their job effectively. She should have told the monsters to sit down and be quiet, and if that didn't work, tell the bus driver to pull over and get support from them in keeping order. I'm sure there is a written protocol in managing unruly students on the bus, and I'm certain it's not 'sit there, respond mildly if at all, and take the verbal abuse.' Even if that was what she was supposed to do, she doesn't deserve a giant payday. I feel very bad this happened to the woman, I sincerely do, but she did nothing to establish herself as an authority figure. She gave the monsters the rope to hang themselves with, and they did just that.   

I feel far worse for the thousands of teenage victims of bullying every day who don't have a position of authority and truly do not know how to defend themselves properly. Instead of making a donation to this woman's vacation fund, I would suggest making a donation to Shrewsbury Youth and Family Services, who are the founders of the D.A.V.I.D. Anti-Bullying Institute. Your money will pay to make a real local difference as opposed to pay for a margarita on the beach for a woman who didn't do her job effectively.  I know the fund wasn't Karen Klein's idea, and I know she will probably end up donating a portion of the money to a good cause (I sure hope so!), but it's still borderline ridiculous how fast the money is coming in for someone to go on vacation.

On the positive side, this story may wake up more parents to begin discussions with their teenagers about how to treat others. Bullying needs to be addressed more seriously, and anything that gets that point across is something I can fully get behind. Parents talking to their children is the most powerful preventative measure in curtailing hate towards others. If more of that that occurs, there will be a dawn to go with this darkness.

On a side note, if this incident had happened in Massachusetts, Karen Klein would be unable to claim any financial gifts that exceeded $50 as a result of something that happened on the job according to the recently established state worker ethics laws.

What do you think about this incident? Would you make a donation to this woman for a vacation?