A little sunlight and unwanted attention always helps

Remember the Asian immigrant honor student whose situation we commented on a few days back? He was suspended, threatened with expulsion and criminally charged with assault, all for daring to defend himself (with admirable restraint, we might add) against your typical Sluggo the Bully at a Canadian government school recently?

Well, a funny thing seems to have happened. Thanks to the brave actions of hundreds of the student's classmates, whose class walkout in support of their fellow student generated an enormous flurry of publicity (all of it bad, no doubt) for the school administrators (we were very happy to have helped participate in said flurry), the muckety-mucks have made a complete 180 from their previous non-negotiable position:

"The 15-year-old will return to Keswick High School this morning with the suspension removed from his academic record and his upcoming expulsion hearing cancelled, the boy's father said yesterday."

We would have loved to see how the poor school district secretaries attempted to keep up with the angry calls, emails and letters that have undoubtedly deluged their offices in the past few days.

"Mr. Koven [the Asian kid's lawyer] said this case raises a number of questions that still need to be answered, beginning with why the Korean-born student was suspended in the first place, why he was given the maximum 20 days, and why the board felt it had to reverse itself."

You've gotta love the enormous amount of crow-eating going on right about now at that particular school board.

Now all that remains is for the local prosecutor to drop the bogus charges against the student, which hasn't happened despite even Sluggo's parents going to bat for the kid:

"The boy still faces a charge of assault causing bodily harm even though his opponent's parents have twice called York Regional Police asking that the charges be dropped."

Oh, we have no doubt that the "authorities" will soon see the advantage in just making this go away quietly. Otherwise, they risk the righteous wrath of a whole passel of right-thinking kids up there who have already demonstrated that they just will not go away until justice is done in this case.