Have you ever been suspended from school? What did you do?

[Mr. Coffee]

My first run in with the High School Law was for, get this, using naughty language. Can you fucking believe that shit? Principle was out of his goddamned mind if ya ask me. Anyways, the school had a policy that whenever ISS or OoSS (In School vs Out of School Suspension) a parent had to come and meet with the vice principle in charge of the student (We had three VP and one Principles, the three VPs took a range of students broken down by alpha of the last name), which meant my Mom came in to meet Mr. Beaver. Yes the man's name was Beaver. The meeting went like this...

VP Beaver: Mame, do you know why we're suspending your son?

Mom, giving me a glare: He's told me, but why don't you go ahead and tell me again.

VP Beaver: Well, your son was using potty mouth...

Mom: What the fuck is potty mouth?

Future Suave Mothafucka: heh... *SMACK!* Ow, Mom!

Couple more suspensions that year, mostly for fighting (fighting dirty and winning). The next year Dr. Johnston (our Principle) retired and Mr. Beaver was promoted, which landed me with Dr. Williams as my new VP. Doc Williams was probably the coolest guy on the entire campus, like a combination of Morgan Freeman, Bill Cosby, and Shaft. Man was very laid back, funny, and always had something wise to say if you needed advice. He also wasn't at all afraid to bitchslap a student if they even dared to think of using physical violence against falculty (Having seen the "I Love Me" wall in Doc Willaims' office, the guy was retired US Army SF).

One day me and my buddy Dave were jonesing for our nicotine fix. The student parking lot was watched by a cop, the outdoor lunch area had two VPs and a couple of teachers on overwatch, and the Bathrooms put us to close to other students that might snitch. But we noticed no one was watching the back door of the cafeteria (or so we thought), so we snuck out back and lit up at the bottom of the fire escape.

30 seconds later the door above us opens and down comes Doc Willaims. He had us dead to rights, no way in hell we could have bullshitted out way out of it. Doc Williams just looks at us, lights a smoke of his own and says "I thought I was the only one that knew about this spot... Go ahead and finish your smokes, but if I ever catch you out here again I'll make ISS you're new homeroom."

[J]

Your school had a Johnston and a Beaver as the Principal and VP, oh dear god...

[Enigma]

A couple times, once in middle school when we were having a school wide snowball fight and some guy hit me with an ice ball. I chased him around the field, tackled him into the snow and gave him a snowjob, which is to say I shoved his face into the snow and punched him around a bit. One of the teachers saw the entire incident and we both got a trip to the VP's office where he gave us a stern talking to and suspended us.
<snip>

I had something similar. During the huge snowball fight, I was pegged at the back of my head, just above my neck with an iceball. I chased that kid and he thought he was safe hiding behind a teacher that was monitoring the yard during recess. Boy was he surprised that I kept chasing him and he kept running around the teacher until I dropped him with a sidekick to the mouth. Gave him a bloody mouth and the teacher had to pick him up because he kept falling down.

Nevertheless I never was suspended during my time serving at school (I felt like I was convicted of some crime and my prison was school). Had a few detentions mainly for lateness. I've done things that by rights I should have been suspended from school several times over but for some reason or another got off scot free or a most banned for a month from using a school facility. Maybe because during my time the zero tolerance policy only made its appearance during my last year or two in high school.

Besides what I mentioned in the first paragraph, I've also:

- disabled a couple of computers by deleting key files from the computer's OS.
- destroyed several class projects belonging to students from another period at an electronics class.
- kneed another student in the chest by jumping off a raised section of the library, bent my legs and hit the guy in the chest with my knees. He fell backwards and hit a large bookshelf, nearly toppling it. Why did I do this? It was part of an extreme reverse tag. The person who was it had to run away from the other participant lest he get caught and beaten up. Was banned from the library for a month from that.
- (when I was in Grade 4) taken a self inking rubber stamp from our Australian exchange teacher and stamped the interior and exterior of a students desk and left the stamp in another students desk. Didn't get in trouble nor was I called on it despite being the only person in the classroom while everyone else was outside during recess. I think I was serving a recess detention for something unrelated.
- been in a couple of fights and wasn't called for it.
- jammed toothpicks into locks and snapped the toothpicks so some kid couldn't use his key.
- took credit for a bully's artwork even though I already had mine graded. Both he and I had the same initials and the teacher forgot that she already graded my work and assumed the bully's work was mine and I agreed, thus denying him of a mark.

Did a few more but I do not remember.

[aerius]

- (when I was in Grade 4) taken a self inking rubber stamp from our Australian exchange teacher and stamped the interior and exterior of a students desk and left the stamp in another students desk. Didn't get in trouble nor was I called on it despite being the only person in the classroom while everyone else was outside during recess. I think I was serving a recess detention for something unrelated.

I did something like that when I was serving a detention to get myself out of shit for handing in an assignment late. The teacher stamped dates on our assignments when we handed them in, mine was a day or 2 late which was probably why I was serving the detention. I reset the date stamp, stamped my assignment, and slipped it into the pile.

- jammed toothpicks into locks and snapped the toothpicks so some kid couldn't use his key.

People did that all the time in my high school, the rooms used for Health class and English had their locks jammed up at least once a week.

[TimothyC]

I talked my way out of it, but in high school there was one guy who would come at me in the halls. I was sick of it, so I dropped my center of mass, a nd thew my arm out in front of his legs. The result was he fell, not on my arm (going to fast for that), but into a cluster of bimbos around the drinking fountain. The unlucky bimbo ended up getting soaked because the drinking fountain became removed from the wall, and there was water everywhere.

[RogueIce]

Then one more time in the 8th for calling a girl a name. 3 days for that.

Three days OSS for calling a girl a name? That must have been some name.

[Mr. Coffee]

Then one more time in the 8th for calling a girl a name. 3 days for that.

Three days OSS for calling a girl a name? That must have been some name.

School officals don't look to kindly on you calling a girl a snaggle toothed cumdumpster, even if she happens to be the unofficial varsity cheerleader squad slut.

[Falkenhayn]

Once in High school, we were playing water polo (our school had a pool), and I got rid of the ball. Dunking was allowed if you had possession, but this kid swam over, dunked me, then put his feet on my shoulders and drove me to the bottom of the deep end (~12 feet). I took a big breath of water, pushed off the bottom, and hit him square in the nose. I broke his goggles, blacked both his eyes, and he got cut on the bridge of the nose where the frames dug into his skin. The injuries were pretty obvious, so the nurse ended up reporting me.

My gym teacher was old school, so he went to the assisstant principal, also old school, and told him the kid who dunked me was asking for it. The VP agreed, and gave me a day's detention for form's sake, to be followed by 5 days out of school with a repeat offense.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Let's see, I beat up a bully rather badly once, but since I was about 6 at the time, they hadn't invented punishments yet .
Apart from that, worst I've had is a visit to the principals office 3 times ever. Once for slathering glue on chair of a friend of mine, once for waving and jumping up and down in the middle of a conversation with a teacher and said friend ("Would you want someone to do that to you?" "Yes, since it would stop your staring". Yeah, I've always known just the right thing t osay. And I meant it, didn't think it would bother anyone), both things in London.
Last time was in Israel for blabbing about a (Harry Potter) book in class with the girl sitting behind me, and I got sent out of the class and to the "student body" managers office. I didn't know where it was. In 12th grade .
Yeah, I was a goody-goody.

[Teebs]

Do most schools really punish you that harshly for fighting regardless of whose fault it is? The one fight I've had at school the other boy came out of it much worse (i.e. I hit him on the nose with my elbow among other things and he didn't manage to hit me) but the school basically ignored it, other than my form teacher congratulating me.

[Master of Cards]

Then one more time in the 8th for calling a girl a name. 3 days for that.

Three days OSS for calling a girl a name? That must have been some name.

I got 3 days for calling 2 fat girls (think morbid obese) fat in an argument we were having.

Yes my school sucked.

[Zac Naloen]

Do most schools really punish you that harshly for fighting regardless of whose fault it is? The one fight I've had at school the other boy came out of it much worse (i.e. I hit him on the nose with my elbow among other things and he didn't manage to hit me) but the school basically ignored it, other than my form teacher congratulating me.

When I was at school it depends on the reason for the fight. If it was a fight over a girl/boy then both got suspension.

If it was self defense because of bullying the bully got punished.

That said, I think I only ever had one detention at school. Simply because I lost my homework once and the teacher was a bitch. I never really had problems with bullies at school so I never got into any fights.

[The Spartan]

I never got suspended. In school or otherwise. Hell I never even got detention.

I was just too careful about my swearing to get caught. I only have a few tardies and my absences were all excused (sick, what have you) since I had an almost neurotic need to get to class on time (thanks to my mom's neurotic insistance that you always be early where ever you're going).

That's not to say I didn't do things that could get me in trouble. I didn't do many but the few times I did, I got away with it.

The thing that stands out in my mind was in Algebra I class the teacher had stepped out and some guys were pestering me. I don't remember what they were saying, but I do remember that it wasn't really anything to get worked up over. That said, back then I didn't know how to deal with anger or frustration so I would bottle it up and save it until I couldn't anymore and it would burst out in, let's be honest, little more than a tantrum. Well, the one that was giving me the most lip also happened to be about 70 lbs lighter than me and sitting directly behind me. I finally snapped, spun around out of my desk, picked him up out of his and slammed against the wall and proceeded to explain to him how he was going to shut the fuck up and leave me alone. A few months later we were having a break as most students had gone down to the FFA show and he mentioned that to the teacher. She didn't believe him and said something to the effect of "No way. Quiet, little The Spartan? You're making that up."

Then there were times when I wished I could get in a fight. I had a similar incident with a friend of mine who was being a dick and even though I didn't touch him I did rant and rave loud enough that the entire commons heard me and knew about it and had a principal come over to tell me to stop. Well, they decided to ostracize me over that and I was teased about it for the rest of the school year (about 3 weeks by that point IIRC) and then left to rot, alone, for the summer. The next year when we came back about two weeks in I hurt my knee again at football practice and I heard from someone else on the team that they had decided at that point to try and make me miserable. There was no way for me to avoid them all day every day because they had classes near by, one had a class with me and we were all on the football team. They went on and on, teasing me openly (to my back but openly nonetheless) telling people things about me that were untrue so that I would have to then respond to other people about this stuff. They once had a spitting contest during practice to see who could hit me first, fortunately they never did.

They spent the entire semester and about half of the second making me miserable. It got so bad that other members of the team, who couldn't care about me one way or the other, were telling them to shut up because it obviously wasn't having an effect and it was just annoying everyone. What they didn't know was that, more than once, I nearly broke. I still can't cry, to this day, without forcing myself to do so because I had to train myself back then to just swallow the lump in my throat and pretend like nothing was wrong.

Of course, I couldn't go to the principals because even if they could do something, then everyone would be against me and I'd be even more alone. And I couldn't turn around and kick anyone's ass because if I'd done that I would have been suspended for an entire school year thanks to the school's no-tolerance policy.

I seem to have gone off on a tangent but it feels good, still, to get that off my chest so I hope you'll forgive my indulgence.

[Chardok]

Spartan - why didn't you just just pick the smallest one on your team that was messing with you and belt him one? Usually in a gaggle like that, when you lay one out, they all back down.

I did that...by accident. Busted a dude's lip that had been picking on me since the 4th grade. I only meant to sock him in the solar plexus, you know? Knock the wind out of him? Anyhoo, slipped on his fat, samoan belly and punched him in his mouth - with braces. So...he was all spitting out blood and his mouth was torn up...but, I never had a problem with bullies after that. it really only takes one time, I guess.

[Losonti Tokash]

Got suspended for a week in 7th grade for asking about the school's bomb threat policy. Apparently asking what the school's official plan (which I later found out was posted on the wall of every office) is equal to actually making a threat.

In 8th grade, I got a week of in school suspension when I was waiting in the lunch line. Some kid ran up, kicked me in the leg, and ran off. I said something along the lines of "what the hell?" and I got in trouble for fighting.

Didn't run into any trouble in high school since I had a few teachers and the principal himself on my side. One teacher I didn't know at all tried to get me in trouble for saying "ass." Nevermind that the school's official acronym for detention was "After School Suspension." It's hardly my fault that they didn't think it through.

[Schuyler Colfax]

Then one more time in the 8th for calling a girl a name. 3 days for that.

Three days OSS for calling a girl a name? That must have been some name.

School officals don't look to kindly on you calling a girl a snaggle toothed cumdumpster, even if she happens to be the unofficial varsity cheerleader squad slut.

I remember what I said now. I told her that she swallows. I know it was dumb and petty. I'm not the type of person that goes up to a person and starts shit, We'd been arguing for about 2 days prior to the actual insult. The administrators pretty much assumed that I insulted her for no reason and they got me on some bullshit sexual harassment.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

I was expelled in 10th grade. Carrying a blade, some other stuff that was misconstrued as hostile intent towards the Admin.

Ended up joining the USMC Infantry, so I guess I focused my abilities

Well that worked out well, hasn't it?

My punishment records tended to revolve around three things.

• Fighting (read: being the punching bag pariah of the entire fucking town), which sucks even if you're the victor; worse if you're Osama Bin Homogay in B(l)ackwater Redneckland USA.
  
  No-homework for the year I had a teacher who would send me to in-school suspension, which ended up killing my other class grades. What do you think happens when you assign giant ten-page papers EVERY FUCKING WEEK to 13-year-olds? Worse? She wouldn't tell you the next assignment or allow other kids to give it to you, creating a perfect trap for perpetual punishment for a one-time fuckup. That stupid bitch.
  
  And finally, once saying something construable as a threat to some bitch who wouldn't quit nagging me for hours. That one very quickly taught me how fucking dangerous Popular Girls can be with their lies, deceit, nagging, verbal trickery, and other rhetorical/political weaponry. I still talked my way down to In-School Suspension so I could take my exams in blessed peace.

I bet the dumb broad's now as big as the trailer she probably shares with nine kids now. Oh well, I'm happy where I am and my life is going now.

Go figure all this shit happens after I was exiled to that stupid insular bigot town outside New Orleans for six years starting in '93, JUST IN TIME FOR PUBERTY. Before then, I was in the principal's office for intellectual sharpness as often as I was for fighting, even during my 'administer a decking a day' campaign I found myself in when I started carving my little kingdom out of the jungles of Louisiana.

[clone1051]

I didn't run into any...administrative entanglements until my senior year of high school, where I was nailed with in-school twice for various computer-related shenanigans. If they'd known everything ELSE I did to their poor, poor 'one laptop per student' program, it would have been far, far worse. After all, I was the one with enough upgraded RAM on my county-issue iBook to run the Quake 3 server, among other things.

It's surprising how schools seem to think nobody knows how to hack a computer. Just about everybody at my high school that got a computer used a proxy (only about 20 people actually bothered to fill out the form to get a computer). My friends and I all broke into ours and gave ourselves admin priveleges. The whole process took about 15 seconds in single-user mode, then 2 minutes or so to create a new account, give the 'student' account admin rights, then delete the new account used to do it.

[The Spartan]

Spartan - why didn't you just just pick the smallest one on your team that was messing with you and belt him one? Usually in a gaggle like that, when you lay one out, they all back down.

I assume you mean on the practice field?

Well, because all the ones that were doing it were more or less about my size and strength and I wasn't really able to lay them out in such a way as to shut them up. Not without cheap shotting them and then I get my other teammates riled up at me for cheap shots on a teammate and would also have those assholes now trying to deliberatly hurt me plus I'd likely end up on "Attitude Adjustment", i.e. running or doing Green Bays, what have you, until coach is tired of watching me.

[Alferd Packer]

I think I played it right; I was well-behaved pretty much up until the start of my senior year. By then, I'd established myself as a "good kid" amongst the faculty, so I could get away with lot of shit for which they could've nailed my ass to the board.

Also, I think that in-school suspension would be a thousand times more aggravating than an out-of-school suspension. As I recall, about ten guys in my senior class were suspended for spraypainting handicapped parking signs in all the teacher's parking spots one night. So during their suspension, they went to the local ballfield and played baseball all day. Oooh, what a punishment.

[Col. Crackpot]

My proudest moment was being suspended for installing Wolfenstien 3d on the computer lab network drive in 1993. Serves you right for using your maiden name as a password.

Also there were many suspensions for fighting. I took shit from no one. Also I held a dim view of jack ass jocks beating on band geeks. As a 6 foot 2 athletic musician i cracked some heads especially those who fucked with the horn section.

[Edi]

I never got suspended. You basically had to commit arosn or call in fake bomb threats or something like that to get suspended for real. Normal punishment was and still is detention hereabouts.

Detention as well as a chewing out in the principal's office happened a few times. Grades 3-6 our class teacher was also the principal, so wasn't a big deal. Every time it happened, it was because of fighting. I had a very straightforward way of dealing with being bullied: After I'd had enough, people started seriously hurting. I was the bookworm of the class and had few friends, so I was picked on a lot. It was verbal for the most part, because when things got physical, more often than not the other guy got twice or more what he managed to dish out. Didn't help in those grades that the school had a class of "special" students (as in, kicked out of other schools because they were simply out of control). They made people's lives miserable whenever they felt like it, but they learned pretty quickly not to get physical with me. It always ended badly for them.

The worst two cases that I got into trouble for were in 5th and 7th grade. In 5th grade, an asshole who thought it a good idea to first knee me in the stomach and later kick me in the back during a football game in PE class was left lying on the field spitting blood and got me two hours detention. Was Friday, so I got a lot of shit from my parents because we were going to the summer house and missed the bus pretty significantly (we had no car back then). The 7th grade incident was when an 8th grader bully started a fight with me. It ended with both of us in the principal's office and he got into a heap of trouble, because I'd been the target of systematic bullying by essentially the whole 8th grade level and got my nose broken in that fight. He wasn't much better off, despite being half again as big as I was. Unsurprisignly, I didn't get any consequences from that one.

I also escaped a couple of times when they would have had grounds to give me a lot of shit. The first was also in 7th grade, a trio of 8th graders came after me and started running their mouths off and after a whole day of the same, I was fed up. I grabbed the nearest one and slammed him face first into the asphalt without any warning. It was a good thing he didn't urt himself beyond getting scratches in his face, but it really shook him. Right about that time, one of the teachers happened along and saw three 8th graders about to attack a 7th grader and tore them a new asshole. The guy I took down later had to resit 9th grade and was in my class. He was an okay guy all told and we had a good laugh about that incident.

The second one was again in PE class. I didn't much care for one asshole who was always on my case cross checking me on purpose during a hockey game. The reason he did it was that we played with a puck instead of a tennis ball, but had a rule that the puck had to stay on ice all the time to avoid injuries. So, I managed to take it all of three inches off the ice and the fucker comes at me afterward, hurling abuse and hitting me with the stick. So I hit him right back, speared him full strength in the chest. I still remember the look of shocked fear on the asshole's face when he realized I had no compunction at all about really fucking him up if he insisted. He took off right in the middle of class and went home to blubber. The teacher saw it all, knew also that I was, as usual, a target of most of the guys who were in the bully's class and was constantly provoked, so he just had me sit a 5 miinute penalty and told me not to do it again. He could by rights have put me in detention and have me in a world of shit but he didn't.

[Davey]

I got suspended for bringing "weapon materials" to school once. I had an empty, spent brass shell casing in my pocket. I was flipping it around in my fingers when a teacher caught me with it and called the principal. If I recall correctly the Police were called not long after I stormed out the door.

I was suspended indefinitely until my lawyer called the school and demanded an explanation. Someone at the rifle club I'm with bailed me out.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Edi, it seems the school took a more intelligent tactic than is par for American schools. Try any of that shit here and you can look forward to AT LEAST suspension, grading into expulsion and even arrest by police. Yes, they ask who started it; no they won't differentiate between attacker and victim AT ALL. Both get punished equally, or Collective Punishment is used.

That's if they're actually trying to look fair; note the verb in that sentence. When they aren't, they invariably side with the popular and/or rich kid. Yes, Calvinism is taught early and often in American culture.

[RogueIce]

This is all in High School:

I never got into much computer mischief, though I hardly ever used the computers at school much anyway (until JROTC, but I wasn't in a fucking around mood then). The one time I did was in the Web Design class, where pretty much everyone had cracked versions of Duke Nukem, Starcraft, and other games variously mingled around the computers. There was also KGen98 with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Paperboy floating around. Since all of the "assignments" were really easy that left plenty of time for game playing.

Note that I was never the one who installed it. I don't even know who did. They were just there and we used them.

However, we did format this one kid's computer almost every day after class. This was 2nd period and apparently nobody ever used that computer for the rest of the day because the next morning the teacher would have to reinstall Windows and everything else. She knew it was me and my friends but she never did anything about it to us (we stopped after awhile which is probably why).

EDIT:

As far as fighting goes, my school seemed to adopt the policy that both sides would get in trouble. Indeed, one time in Homeroom when we were doing the "go over the handbook" thing it got brought up and the conversation went about like this:

Student: What if it's self defense?
Teacher: Then you need to get away.
S: What if you can't?
T: Um, then, you still need to try to get away? Look, it doesn't make much sense but that's just the way it is. Sorry.

So at least that teacher knew how stupid it was. Since I never really witnessed any fights go down, or heard about them (I was largely out of the grapevine except for the major incidents, like the time someone drove a golfcart down the stairs in front of the lunchroom and crashed into the library's windows) I don't really know how the administration dealt with it. I never got into any fights myself. Didn't seem to be a big thing to do at our school anyway.