About the Student Suspended for Shaving Her Head to Support Her Friend With CancerEleven-year-old Delaney Clements is fighting cancer. In 2010, she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. Delaney, according to news reports, is very sick. One in 300 boys and one in 333 girls under age 20 will develop cancer. But those numbers don't really ...
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About the Student Suspended for Shaving Her Head to Support Her Friend With Cancer
Sorry but this is more complex and stupid than it would appear to be. Sure, I'm very sympathetic to the child who is gravely ill and kinda sorta understand the motives of the young lady who shaved her head in sympathy, let me very clear about that. Who I'm after with a bull whip are the parents of the child who allowed her to do this. I have little doubt they thought this was a wonderful thing, that their very young child had the empathy and the love for a friend to do this BUT they had a responsibility to their daughter to prevent the hubris that now surrounds all these people. I'm just enough of a cynic to believe the parents did it for good old fashioned Yankee publicity. In their mind they were raising the consciousness of a truly terrible disease but...it wouldn't hurt for their child to be heroine-ized in the process. These people knew, or should have known, that sending her off to school with a shaved head was going to create a furor-which it did. Did the school over react but kicker her out? Possibly BUT they were within their right to do so. Doubtless they saw two more bald heads tomorrow and then, over the weekend, a dozen more appear on Monday. I can't speak for the ill child but just possibly she and her family might prefer the privacy that very serious diseases in children should have. I must wonder if they were contacted before the child got out the clippers and, by the way, I'm guessing it was Mommy or Daddy who did the peeling.
The net effect of all of this is that one little girl whose intentions were admirable has now, with the overt participation of her parents, made this a circus. The point will be lost as the damn media drools over the good deed doer. The child in the hospital may feel she caused her friend embarrassment and, I'd guess, if she'd been consulted before the deed was done, she'd have put that kibosh on it; After all, she already was bald and knew how it felt to be a young girl with a hairless pate. Hers had a reason, the shaved child now has weeks, month of probable embarrassment ahead of her. And just wait until her parents are asked if their daughter is dying of some disease and then have to explain that, no, this was intentionally done, probably by them and then have to answer a raft of other questions. One of which is the perfectly valid, "Does she have ring worm?". It's a classic example of a good deed gone awry with unfortunate consequences for all save the parents of the SLY girl who have girded their loins and believe they did the right thing. It's my opinion, but....they didn't.