Somebody Died

It is a tragedy when it happens at a school. Particularly children. It happened a few times while I was growing up at various schools I attended. I recall hearing my brother being awarded an Eagle Scout badge and the speech given by the scoutmaster, recalling a heroic act of a fit man throwing himself in front of a train so as to rescue a young child who had fallen on the tracks. The hero threw the boy clear, but perished. I hadn't connected the story with the story of Christ, it was shockingly real to me, a young boy being raised by atheists. Later, I remember when my sister died from renal failure after rejecting a kidney transplant. I remember thinking it didn't have to be that way .. her death wasn't from sudden violence, but an inexorable slow decline.
Later, in high school, a kid left in year 10, as some did, and was reported dead the next year from a motor bike accident. I had recalled their bullying me in school change rooms because of my accent and weight, so I hadn't really cared. Another kid from my year repeated his HSC, and died when he got himself in a drunk driving accident that same year.
It was disease or dumb violence that claimed young lives, to my way of thinking.
I was a young teacher at a new school with a reputation for students that died. I had thought that such a thing must surely be the result of staff negligence, but I was wrong. The neighborhood was dangerous, and innocent people died. And people who weren't so innocent died. A year 10 girl was killed by a brother of a friend playing with a handgun. Some boys drowned at a camp. A boy rode a bike into a bus. Another stuck their head out of a bus and was killed when the bus moved away. Another overdosed on drugs and died in a clothing bin they had been living in. By the time I was faced with a boy with a peanut allergy I immediately brought it to the attention of welfare staff at the school I was working at. I wasn't taken very seriously, but I put it down to the fact that they had been trying to rid themselves of me, and so I extracted a promise they would inform all staff at the boarding school. They promised they had, but then they threatened me with what could happen to me professionally if I discussed the welfare matter of a boy's health with the public. Because of the threat, I went to the superior of the welfare teacher and told them about the issue, and was given the same assurance and threat.
The school rid itself of me, but the following year, the school child, then in year 8, died from anaphylactic shock brought about when a supervising teacher ignorant of their peanut allergy ordered the student to lick peanut butter from a spoon in front of their peers. The child died in seconds.
I read the report in the paper, and knowing that other staff member had known of the issue, decided to keep quiet about it because I felt that involving myself would make it appear as if I had an axe to grind with my unfair dismissal. I was furious when the department of education legal division called me to say they would ignore my unfair dismissal claim because of the boys death. But I felt they'd use any excuse. I felt I only had to wait for the findings of the coroner to show incompetence on the part of the school, then I could ask about my unfair dismissal. I hadn't expected what actually resulted. First, the coroner ruled it as an open finding accident, assigning some blame to the parents for failing to report it to the school. Secondly, the department of education ordered me to delete my writings for my news blog, Sydney's Conservative Weasel, which had, among 2 million words and images, some of the headlines and links to the death of the school boy.
By blaming the parents, the coroner made it difficult for the parents to go further with compensation claims which might have exposed the school to a claim from me for their handling of my unfair dismissal. By forcing me to delete my writings on a false pretext, the department was able to claim that any subsequent writings were after the fact. Someone set up a false internet kiosk from my unusual web address for the weasel's blog.
For the March Election in 2011, David Daniel Ball will be running as an independent conservative for the legislative council (senate). The running platform will be "Justice for Hamidur Rahman."