In Aurora, Colorado, a first-grader was suspended for sexual harassment after singing a line from an LMFAO song to a girl in his grade. “I’m sexy and I know it,” D’Avonte Meadows crooned. He was thrown out of school for harassment because the school’s discipline code reads that his behavior had “negative effects on the learning or work of others.”
Predictably, the boy’s mother was shocked that D’Avonte was punished: “I could understand if he was fondling her, looking up her skirt, trying to look in her shirt … That, to me, is sexual harassment. I’m just, I’m floored. They’re going to look at him like he’s a pervert. And it’s like, that’s not fair to him,” said Stephanie Meadows.
Of course, Ms. Meadows also acknowledged that D’Avonte had done the same thing last month while “shaking his booty near the girl’s face” and been warned by the assistant principal to stop.
But now she’s getting involved. “I’m going to definitely have to sit with him and see if he understands exactly what the song means,” Meadows said.
Her involvement comes a little late. D’Avonte was suspended earlier this year for disruptive behavior that had nothing to do with his solo act.
But Meadows is still focused on the district’s culpability. “I think it’s kind of overwhelming. You know, sexual harassment on a six-year old?” Meadows said “I don’t understand. You know. Kids are kids.”
Indeed. And parents are parents.
The school shouldn’t have suspended D’Avonte for sexual harassment. That’s absurd. But clearly he was being disruptive.
Perhaps the girl should have beaten the snot out of him. But then she’d be suspended for bullying, no doubt.