A developer can make $100k easy and have a career that lasts for more than 4 decades.

Na, I would rather he have to live the rest of his life with being fired from his job and denied his pension for being a corrupt asshole.

Religion is involved all right... the religion of high school football. The parents elect the board and the board hires administrators that protect the holy football. Football jocks bully some geek, reactions range from slap-on-the-wrist to nobody-gives-a-shit. Administrator punishes football players, team misses the playoffs, and the board fires him.

Why would the WIPIAL (the organization responsible for HS football in Western Pennsylvania) give a shit about some kind that is not a football player being bullied? The school administrators stick together and will cooperate on the coverup.

You have correctly identified the thought process behind every highschool administrator in western Pennsylvania.

Looks like the cover their asses machine is in full operation.

So if I am going to start punching you in the face for no good reason, and if you fight back you deserve to get punished just as much as I do?

While the post linked in the story is some right-wing nutjob blog (AR15 contest on the page of a report of school bullying, there's a solution for you)... the story is real. GP's link to the Tribune Review is an actual newspaper with actual reporters.

All police hate being recorded. It forces them to do their job properly.

I consider this the same direction. Getting people who are not qualified to stop doing things that are not their job.

And before social media and enhanced coverage of school issues... this was the standard operating procedure. School administrators will only do the right thing when shamed into it. Until then, cover up and deny everything.

I am wondering why more kids do not go into "break the nose of everyone that looks at me" mode. The old "stand up to the bullies, they will cower away" simply does not work when they know they have the back of the administration.

True, but Stubenville is effectively a suburb of Pittsburgh. (I think the rape thing stopped those idiotic "burb of the burgh" commercials they used to run all of the time on local tv.)

Either way, the entire region (w PA, WV, e OH) puts high school sports, especially football, on some sort of altar that the local government and police assholes worship.

Simple, they redefine bullying as meaning "anything that embarrasses the administration". Everything else is "kids will be kids".

Does that count when one of the parties is committing a crime?

And the kid that is charged was being terrorized.