Belleville, Illinois – Two of the students involved in the beating of a 17-year-old classmate while riding on a Belleville school bus will be charged with felonies for their part.

The altercation was captured on video (watch it after the jump), and shows a 17-year-old get beat by two different students within moments of each other. The race issue was thrown around when the story first broke, as the victim is white and his attackers are black, but more information has come out since these reports and it doesn’t look like race was a motivating factor. Or if it was, there is no evidence to support it.

The 14 and 15-year-old shown punching on the kid were not only expelled from Belleville West High School for the rest of this year and all of next, they were also charged with felony counts of aggravated battery. If convicted, they will spend some time in a juvenile corrections facility. “This is an egregious act,” said Belleville Township High School District 201 school board member Kurt Schroeder. “We have to send a message to all students we will not tolerate it.”

The school board acted quickly and severely, letting the bus driver go (although the company that actually employs the driver states the driver did nothing wrong) and began suspending any student shown in the video who seemed to egg on the attack. Any student who stood up and did not sit down as the bus driver instructed, or laughed at the attack – suspended. But of course, the parents of these suspended students feel that this is unfair. The parent of one of the kids who was charged with beating the boy says the tape has “ruined” their family’s lives. That’s right, the tape. Not the contents on the tape.

During a school board meeting over this incident, I got a kick out of a comment made by Alicia Brown. She stated, “It was inhumane the way that child was treated. But those children need an education, whether they get it at Belleville West or somewhere. Education is power, knowledge is power. How are they going to learn how to become productive citizens if we don’t educate them on what a productive citizen acts like.”

My answer to that? Get the kids some reading material while they are in a juvenile corrections facility. They committed a crime and should be punished for it. Belleville High School is not responsible for teaching kids not to beat on someone who is not a threat and is not fighting back. That kind of shit is taught in the home. The fact that other kids did not take part in this and another steps in between an attacker and the victim is proof of that.

Since the video was released, and the media got hold of it, the bus driver has been let go for not stopping the bus and intervening. Other students have also came forward saying that this is not a rare occurrence for Number 117. A bus they say is overcrowded and rowdy. Students report fearing for their safety and revealing their own stories of being attacked by students.

Dunno what to think about this one in regards to the reverse-racism context. If you watch the above video (which includes the boy who broke up the second fight), as well as the comments made by other students in the source links, it doesn’t seem like that is the case. It looks like a case of bullying against a kid who is very passive. That’s not faulting the kid that got beat, but I remember my school days, and I know that bullies always take the path of least resistance. The fact that there are other white students who ride the bus who have not come forward with tales of being targeted for being white lends credence to this not being a black-and-white issue. That being said, I am curious as to how different this would have been handled had the races been reversed.

More video:

Source | Source

Tags: assault and battery, Beating, Belleville, Bus, Hate Crime, High school, racism