This is appalling. My mother is a middle school French teacher, and something similar happened to her this last school year--a student decided that she absolutely hated my mother. She'd bitch about every assignment and test and even circulated a petition around the school trying to get my mother fired for incompetence. When my mother talked to the kid's guidance counselor about it, the counselor said the student claimed my mother had told her to do it. They're pretty sure she has some major Issues now, but here's the difference: the administration supported my mother. They did not make her change a thing. And this kid is also a middle schooler, so she's still got a lot of maturing left to do (or at least I hope so, anyway).

I graduated from college not too long ago (class of '07) and I have to say that I was stunned at the exceptions granted to some of my fellow students even from the most supposedly hardass professors out there, and even to me when my clinical depression was at its worst and I could barely make myself get out of bed. (I would have flunked me if I'd been the professor. Nobody did, which oddly enough made me even more upset because I was blatantly flouting the rules even if it was because I was ill.) I remember a friend of mine said she was taking a week off before spring break to go on a cruise with her family and her newly-adopted little brother, and the reason she presented when she asked to be excused from classes then was because "newly-adopted children need time to bond with their families" (which may be true, but why the hell were her parents okay with it?) even though she'd already pretty much moved out of the house.

I'm in complete agreement with you on this one.