“Why only $25,000?” Who cares? The point here is that these teacher’s made Alex Merritt’s life miserable. His family probably wanted to settle in order to move on with their lives and I think it’s safe to say that these teachers and the district ARE being dragged through the mud by the negative media attention (which they deserve).

If you have all these doubts about what happened, maybe you should go to the MN Dept of Human Rights website and read about the case yourself. It’s not hard to find. Here’s a quote from their site: “It should be noted that the school district’s OWN investigation identified witnesses who substantiated allegations that teachers Cleveland and Filson made regular “gay” jokes in the classroom, and did nothing to stop subsequent ‘homo and gay jokes’ by classmates, sometimes smiling and laughing after the students’ comments.”

So yes, the harassment did indeed happen. It’s not rumor or hearsay. Get over it. And not that it’s relevant, but STEP teachers teach 2 periods a day and have very small class sizes (like 10-15 kids). Cleveland and Filson were actually Alex’s only teachers at STEP. (Cleveland would make fun of him before lunch and Filson would joke about the same things after lunch.) And do you really find it unbelievable that none of the other students “called a reporter?” There is a very sad lack of people in the world who have the courage to stand up against authority figures who abuse people, especially when it’s not happening to them and when it IS happening to the gay kid (or kid perceived to be gay). If you’re surprised they’re not calling reporters, you clearly don’t know much about teenagers.

Thankfully Alex stood up for himself and people are supporting him now.

What the fuck? You ask a critical question about the REPORTING and BOOM, I’ve gone too far “defending the teachers”?

Maybe you could read into the spririt of my post and see that the REPORTING SUCKS and this all seems odd to me.

Why only $25,000? Hell, there’s other cases like this that are settling for 40 times that (case in mind, the student WAS actually gay and got beat up too). Why not more? Why settle? Why not drag them through the mud? And if not Merritt, then another student who was victimized?

There were 60 kids in two classes that saw this (guessing on class size here, but grant me some leeway) and none of them have called a reporter? No reporter has contacted a student? Why not? Is everybody under a gag rule? Sure, the school and the staff won’t say anything. But the students? These teachers teach 4 classes a day, right? 120 students each = 240 students… you think this happened to one student in private? Is there something else her? Did these teachers have something else against the victim?

If *I* have questions, then what will the people who think this kind of behavior is okay be saying? They have some leverage here in the . Ignoring the oddities will not help anybody’s cause here. Figure out what the weaknesses in the case are and answer them. Reporters should be doing thing naturally – find the questions and ASK THEM. But reading the StarTribune piece and re-hashing it, then bashing anyone who asks a critical question about it is just being an idiot.