How in the Seven Hells did I get suspended from school for THIS

this is BOGUS

So there's this girl in school who is a total bully, she and her mean girl friends are always picking on other kids. Like there's this boy who's not very good in sports and they forged his signature on the sign up lists for every single event on track and field day. So then he had to either do all those sports or else get in trouble for signing up and dropping out.

Another thing they did was there was this girl who told on one of them for cheating and so they hacked her library account and made it look like she was signing up to all these sex sites.

The ringleader is the child of one of the teachers and this teacher cannot believe that HER PRECIOUS ANGEL would ever act like this behind her back

Vindi told me to ignore these kids when they say rude things to me and I've been trying, I've been trying really hard but today was the total last straw

...they started picking on one of the kids from Mr. Harrad's ground school courses.

He's a year younger than me and his name's Bellanco and he's really good in the flight sims. I guess one of the girls asked him out and he said no and she got really offended at being turned down, so her and her stupid friends took a bunch of pictures in the girls locker room (not even telling the girls they took pictures of) and hacked his omni tool and uploaded the pics so it would look like he did it. I heard them giggling about it in the bathroom

Maybe I could have gotten Raelon to fix the hack without Lanco ever finding out about it, but...I know Lanco's even Hierarchy and stuff but he's in my training group and Mr. Harrad is kin or close to it

So I told the bitch to fix it, now, and she sneered at me and asked me what I was going to do if she didn't.

So I gave her an example, and oh my spirits her friends suck, one of them was totally useless throwing up in the corner and another ran out of the bathroom screaming, and miss big tough ringleader was begging the fourth one to undo it now, quick, and all I'm thinking is why is everyone so afraid of a girl who crumbles like sandstone after just one slap, really, I was going to give her a blue eye but I didn't even have to get that far, she fell apart as soon as she saw her blood on my talons

Vindi says I'm lucky I got suspended and didn't get the cops called on me!

how is this fair the teachers get ME in trouble and not those mean girls!!

it was only a little blood I bet most kids get worse beatings from their parents all the time

i can't go to school for the next week and i'm supposed to apologize to the bitchs but I won't also Vindi says I'm grounded

i didn't even go for an eye or anything

You should have listened to Vindi.

Don't challenge bullies, that gives them power.

I don't think you know anything about bullies. If someone is bothering you, harassing you, and is not going to stop. Then you bash their fucking head in. This makes them stop and treat you with respect.

Wrong. You ignore them. Forget they exist.

I don't think you understand how bullies work, dear. Ignoring them only makes them try harder.

This why turians all mad.

Not you, you show smarts. You understand life. Others try to make you stone, make you dead thing. No. Fight them, too. They wrong. You right. You like vorcha. You vermin.

Is good, well done.

So says the privileged party girl who regularly wrecked aircars worth more than some people's houses. You are uh...really not qualified to give any kind of opinion on this.

This is a dumb answer. You know this is a dumb answer. Seriously it's secondary school on the Citadel, not Omega gangland.

So, Trex. You did a stupid thing. I mean yes props to you for standing up for a friend but still it was a stupid thing to do. Public and physical violence in that kind of setting tends to complicate and compound problems more than it solves them. Oh sure they're scared of you now and they won't dick around with you directly but, from what you say, since when have they ever been direct? Plus now the system's stacked against you.

You want to know how you deal with this? You use the system. Get Vindi to actually do what a parent is supposed to do and raise holy hell with the school administration. Have her get the parents of other kids who've been harassed to back you up. Get proof.

And do you know what you have then?

A case. That you then take to the school board. Tada! The system's now working for you instead of them and now they're the ones getting formally hauled in front of disciplinary hearings and review boards to determine how badly they're going to get it. It's paperwork and red tape and bureaucratic hell for them now. Not you.

Pay them back, don't do their work for them Trex.

I am torn between applauding the hacking skills of the girls and feeling sorry for the victims.
No really, the stunts they pulled is a level above script kiddie (if barely). I mean yes, school networks are notoriously weak secured due to the open nature, number of partcipents and so on, yeah a every teen could do that.
On the other hand, depositing files on a private omni-tool without setting of all sorts of alerts is a level above, would be easier to scan for pw hash and go for a social network profile. But enough of that...

You said Harrad is teaching at your school right? Maybe you should have faught connections with connections and report this to him rather than beating up the culprit in question. I'm sure he would have helped you with getting results. And yeah, as said above, do it with proof for best results.
Actually no, and if they did the parents would be in trouble with something called child services. The Citadel isn't Omega.

I try this with Sandman, doesn't work.

@Vigilant : Sorry Sarah, but this is bullshit. I tried that in high school, and it just signaled to them that I was easy picking. The ugly truth is that you don't always have a way out with bullies. Fortunately it's not the case in Trex's situation...
@Trex : Your particular bullies are audacious, but they also commit felonies. Putting compromising picture in another person's omni-tool? Not ok in Citadel Space. And I'm pretty sure a competent computer specialist can prove that the data was inserted against the user's wishes.
So next time they pull this kind of crap, ask to competent people around you what to do. Don't strike back in a way that give them ammunition against you like you did. Your heart was in the right place, but be smart.
@Schmidt : To you Sandman is an extranet bully. It means that he won't pursue you in real life, so the way out is obvious : Just don't read his posts, or use a filtering VI like this one so you won't even see his posts at all!

*Draws breath through teeth*

Dude, if you're on Tysari anytime soon? Check by my shop- we'll mod your Omni Tool for free so you can hack those assholes into a sun.

Look, I'm all for kicking a bully's ass- God knows I got in trouble for it at school- but in this scenario? Karma. It's a bitch, and it works.

mr schmidt - Harrad teaches groundschool for flight training. Not at my school. Me and Lanco go there after school to learn about flying.

vigilant vanguard - I'm sorry, not defending your friends is morally wrong.

Mr. Sandman - thinking about the system makes me want to barf, Kayana says you can't trust the system, it's stacked against you. and this sounds like the pussy stuff Vindi does now instead of just blowing her enemies' heads off. on the other hand you are kind of right that this isn't omega and you can't blow heads off here (as easily) and being in trouble sux. so...tell me more.

here to help - look, I could've asked Raelon to set their omnitools on fire, or wipe their hard drives or put kiddy porn or something on there, but my dad says I shouldn't ask my friends to do illegal stuff, and besides, the karma would have been funny but they wouldn't know who was responsible and so they wouldn't learn the real lesson which is don't mess with my friends.

Just ruin her life nonviolently. Do it the Salarian way.

Sorry you're having a hard time, Trex.

I know Vindi wants me to pass down some words of wisdom-but I got suspended from school for fighting a few times, and my commitment to nonviolence is...its sometimes honoured more in the violation, as humans say. (Don't use what I said as an excuse, the system is busted, but we still have to live with other sentient beings. Also you're a turian with responsible-precitizen points from Harrad. You have decent pull with the system, don't waste that.)

Try not to take getting punished first too personally. Once you drew blood, they HAD to suspend you (seriously girl, it was on your hands) but any punishment of the other girls would require investigation and long talks and blah, blah blah. Don't let Vindi drop that.

My dear you are conflating two very different issues. You are not a victim (save of the walnut-esque confines of your own brain), you are not a poor injured and innocent party. You are an objective idiot who proudly flaunts his idiocy like a geriatric tycoon in a strip club. I mean seriously: you challenge people on the extranet to fights. You cast yourself as the martyr with such frequency that Jesus Christ is starting to think you're a bit of an attention whore.

Ignoring your betters isn't some brave defiance of the powers that be, that warm feeling isn't the approval of your peers. It's the sludge of perpetual sub-mediocrity wrapping you in it's trashy embrace.

But rest assured my dear Jaquento, I hold hope that one day, one day, you will attain enough awareness to be as disgusted with yourself as virtually everyone who knows you is.

...I would just like to take this moment to-

I'm sorry I'm a bit emotional right now, please forgive me

-I would like to take this moment to thank the Academy and Galactic Press. I never, in all my wildest dreams, thought that I would be deemed such a societal menace as to have people recommending others spamfilters to block my general existence.

Truly I am touched.

Now I know the lovely Ms. Rondor cannot hear this (likely because she is currently neck deep in her own intestinal tract) but I feel that I must thank her most of all. Oh I know what you'll say: she's self absorbed, critically defective, utterly impotent, possibly developmentally challenged and you would, of course, be completely right. But you're forgetting one thing my dear supporters, the fans who have borne me thus far

She is also literally incapable of coexisting with people who tell her she's wrong.

Thank you and goodnight.

Oh hate it all you like but you've got to work with it at some point and it'll get things done with less backlash to you and yours. For example: more is better. As I said the system's kind of stacked against you now, and any countermanding accusations are going to look as unreliable as fuck. So get in the others, go for volume. Let's see, from your count alone and not counting you: there's the boy they signed up for all the sporting events, the girl who told on them for cheating, Bellanco, and all the girls they took pictures of. And that's only the ones you've mentioned. Multiple accusations from independent sources will force at minimum an investigation by the school board. More if you can get parents in an uproar.

And yes I know what you're thinking, it's weak, it's shameful, it'll make you a target. That much scrutiny from up above is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable and disinclined to help. And you're not necessarily wrong about the latter part but as long as it exists outside the school disciplinary system, as long as everyone's too quiet and too afraid to level any serious accusations, they're always going to win. Either you end up sabotaging your own reputation and do their work for them or they keep with the constant needling and general shitiness.

The system might be unfair, it might be biased, but it's honestly your best shot for dealing with this beyond the short term.

Is that really the lesson they need to learn, though? Look at it from their point of view. They've got an authority figure who at the least will ignore any infraction they commit that's not grossly blatant - relative to their peers, that gives them power, the ability to act without suffering the consequences that'd apply to anyone else who did what they do. They're too young to be thinking in terms of a broader societal matrix, so they're in the mindset of personal consequences - if they do a thing, and don't suffer, that thing was fine. Maybe (hopefully) they have second thoughts in private from time to time, but for practical purposes, that's the mindset that's driving their behaviour generally. And within their little world (until it all comes crashing down) that seems like a good place for them to be: they have a kind of authority, the sense that when they have a goal they can pursue it, and if somebody gets in their way, they have the power to do something about it.

Now on the surface what you did might seem like a challenge - you got in their way, and demonstrated that they can't do anything about you. But now they're seeing you getting in trouble - they didn't even have to make that happen, it just did. However painful your attack was and however timid it may make them around you in the future, it's still not going to be difficult for them to twist what happened into a validation of their original belief: you defied their 'authority', and you were punished for it, therefore you were wrong and they were right. Whatever their moral failings they're educated girls, they can rationalise away the harm you did them any number of ways, dismiss you as just a thug; in their eyes, they're no more obligated to learn or even look for a moral lesson than a Matriarch who gets mugged ought to find wisdom in her attacker's point of view. You know you did what you did out of honourable motives, but they don't, and there's no pressure for them to learn better, as opposed to just accepting the explanation that suits what they already believe. At best, you've made them fear you, and that only goes so far - you've been suspended, you're not around to make them fear you now, and they may have every reason to think that if you repeat what you did, you'd be expelled and they'd be free to continue their ways without ever worrying about you again. At worst, they may hate you. That's dangerous, maybe not for you personally, but for your friends. Hate can make a person willing to suffer, so long as they can vent their hatred on anything they consider a suitable target, like your friends. Or even if they feel truly impotent, if they're too terrified to contemplate even that - there'll be someone they can take it out on. It may not be someone you know, but it'll still happen.

So, yeah, I feel Sandy is right, use the system. There is unfairness in the system, in any system (hello from Illium), but these girls aren't Spectres, they're not untouchable, and the ringleader's parent is just one teacher, not the chancellor or the head of schools administration. Even if the people in power are the kind who'd rather cover up a problem than put in the hard work to deal with it, pragmatism is still on your side - a clique of persistent bullies (especially ones whose crimes could easily splash bad publicity everywhere) is going to be an ongoing problem that even the most jaded administrator will recognise they do not want to have happening in their schools. Solving the problem now is less work than letting it spiral on down until one of their pranks drags C-Sec or the media into the fray. And (perhaps more importantly) these girls won't see the authorities punished - however hard they may try to rationalise away the fact that what they did had consequences for them, there'll be no outside evidence to back them up, nor any indication that those consequences might stop happening for any reason if they keep inviting them.

nah punch the twats in the face till your hand breaks

compulsory education given to the lower castes on khar'shan is different to schools on the citadel though, so don't do that

And you are an objective asshole who can't stand it when people do not fall in line with his view of things and worship every word that leaves his fingertips. You are unable to entertain the idea that others might have a contradicting yet valid point because that hurt your overly inflated ego so much that you can only respond with insults and the belittling your opponents, because you otherwise would have to acknowledge that you are not the begining and the end of all wisdom and your precious ego can't have that, can it?
Pot, meet cettle. Which ties into the first.
Well, I can say the same thing about you. One these days you might notice that the world just doesn't bend to your view and when it does I hope you and your fanclub will seee you for the slimy piece of refuse that you are and that has to rely on a wall of faux eloquency and crude insults to stay ahead.

Either follow the advice of Sandman or if you want to use your own brand of vigilante justice do not get caught.

You do realize that that excuse is flimsy as a crepe-paper cockbangle right? That I rather respect and get along perfectly fine with people who have flat out punched monorailed cadamite sized holes through my arguments or pre-established notions? The problem isn't that I'm violently allergic to independent thought and it manifests via posts, that's a lazy answer. The problem is that you are a completely terrible excuse for a human being.

God seriously, do any of you even consider how boring it would be for me to have everyone agree with me all the fucking time?

And again, re: ego. I'm rather assuredly not the one who demanded to know when the corporate goons were going to show up to ram their jackbooted foots up the poor suffering small business owners ass. Or, again, challenged a person on the extranet to a fight.

Can you even conceive of how sad that makes you look?

That is eminently unfair. One: the assumption that I'm a slimy piece of refuse purely because I'm whole orders of magnitude more fabulous than you could hope to be. Two: that I'm restricted to faux eloquence and crude insults.

I am perfectly capable of implementing crude eloquence and faux insults you utterly mundane and completely banal cumstain your mother should have swallowed that now only serves to further dirty the alcohol soaked and beshitted bedsheets 'neath your family's collective inbred corpulence.

See? I'm a man of a great many talents.

nah but not bursting a blood vessel in a thread on the extranet about a kid you don't know might do wonders for both your physical and mental well being ::)