I ‘won’ both my disciplinary hearings.

Freshman year, I beat a bully so bad his family had to move somewhere he could get PT for his crippled hands.

I showed up to that one with a PD detective, whos sone was also a bullying victim. He threatened charges against the Vice principal for aiding and abetting the assault of a minor/ potential attempted murder which i had successfully defended my friend from. (Bully had said he was going to choke out my friend until he was retarded- and was in the process of doing so when jumped him) i had told the VP himself the timing and specificity of the threat, hence the possible charge.

This turned the meeting pretty quickly into one about school negligence and culpability, and triggered policy changes that included mandatory dismissal of staff for failure to intervene. We also got a SRO, whos first statement was that he was a resource for students, especially if staff was failing in their duty to them, and that he was not another disciplinarian. (To his credit, and before the ACAB crew, who i agree with, he did live up to that- guy was genuinely a good guy got a bunch of certs in child counciling and advocacy. In his 20 year tenure, according to his recent obituary, he arrested 1 student- for a rape on school premises that he stopped. )

That Vps carreer ended a couple months after, partially at the hands of the SRO. He punched a student who wouldnt give up his hat. Unfortunately, it was a football player, who knocked him out with his helmet. The SRO watched the whole thing, told the players to get to the field. VP left the school handcuffed to a stretcher.

Junior year I had a sillier one. My GF and I were in AP calc. The teacher gave me a blank copy of the midterm, to copy her near perfect exam as a study guide for the upcoming final. I was doing so in study hall, when the english teacher grabbed both off my desk, accusing me of cheating. This led to another disciplinary hearing, scheduled for Friday afternoon. On Thursday I talked with the math teacher, who told me she had been told she was not allowed to attend, and her ‘input was not nescessary’.

At the time, I had a job filming for public access TV, mostly school sports, but also the school committee meetings. So, after the meeting that evening, I spoke with the superintendent of the school system, and expressed my concerns.

Next day, I go into the meeting alone, and sit down, facing the principal, flanked by the VP and the english teacher, feeling pretty screwed. The VP (not the original one from last story, but his replacement is the same disciplinarian role ) starts things off yelling about how bad cheating is, how ive ruined my academic career, and can kiss college goodbye.

He has just hit his stride when the door opens. The Superintendent walks in, along with one of my favorite teachers.

First words out of the Superintendents mouth are “what the fuck is wrong with you? go take a walk, before you have an aneurism!” And he sends the VP out.

They then take a seat on either side of me, clearly marking his side in the adversarial meeting, and asks the english teacher exactly what she saw. he the asks the principal to pass the tests in question over. He then asks her mockingly, "do you know what a midterm is? They were 4 months ago! and these papers clearly say midterm in very large letters. Look, this one (holding up my GFs) even has a grade on top, a 98%, end a unicorn sticker, well done Lauren! (my gfs name, also the math teacher was a total geek, and famous for putting cutesy stickers on good grades)

He the continues on, “still, cheating is a serious accusation.” Switching his attention the principal, "I suppose you did a thorough investigation before this meeting. Have you discussed this with the math teacher? Did she say there was any credit to be gained from this assignment?, by the way where is she?
At this point the principal knows hes in a bit of trouble and is looking down at the table and barely responding. The superintendent goes on for a minute about how its wasnt very sporting of them to have 3 people gaming up on me and not to even have the math teacher there to defend my side.

At that point, he turns to me, and asks how I felt about the ambush. And I start off with “well, I dont really get how we got here in the first place- you have to be incredibly fucking myopic…” (I was going to say to assume copying the answers from one page that says exam to another must always be cheating ) but i was interrupted by the principal who seeing an out, had jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over, and was pointing at me, yelling

“HE SWORE! HE SWORE! HE FUCKING SWORE” he looked like a giant toddler, and the superintendent and my teacher burst out laughing at him. They laughed for an uncomfortably long time. Until he calmed down and sheepishly returned to his seat.

Finally, it was the art teacher who spoke up. He goes “well, rules are rules, you did swear. The maximum penalty for a first time for that is a 1 day suspension, do you have anything important tomorrow?” I shake my head no, and he says “good, why dont you take a three day weekend while we all consider what to do about this whole debacle.” He looks over at the superintendent, who nods, and we leave the room.

On monday i found out the decision had been made to remove me from the english class, with the art teacher allowing me to hang in his room. I was offered my 95 grade average to be entered in as my score for all future assignments, getting me out of both a final exam and a 10 page paper, which suited me fine.

Later I found out the english teacher got demoted back to teaching middle school. The principal was apparently put on their version of double secret probation, with a caution that one more complaint and he was out, and the VPs contract was up already not renewed (i can only assume both of those were final straw descisiond, although the school system generally tried to stagger each schools leadership turnovers, and the principal only had a year left before he was leaving )