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It was an accident that occurred under extremely sloppy management.

7 Comments

Ryo Uchida, an associate professor at Nagoya University and an expert on school accidents, commenting on the case of a former member of a high school cheerleading club in Aichi Prefecture whose lower body was paralyzed in an accident. The practice involved a difficult technique of having two senior club members hold her feet and lift her up to their shoulders, and then having her do a forward flip and land, even though she had not even mastered flips closer to the ground. The cheerleader landed on the mat on her neck, damaging her spinal cord. The 18-year-old girl and her parents are suing the school.

© Mainichi Shimbun

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Accidents will happen, maybe not every day and not of much consequence most of the time, but sometimes they will and institutions have the responsibility of doing their outmost effort to prevent them. Sloppy management sounds like a very good reason why this school should be sued. One thing is for something regrettable to happen even when everything that can be thought of is taking care, another very different is when necessary measures are not in place.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

Newer rules everywhere require to have attentive spotters at the place. Sometimes a few male club or ‘rented’ members do the spotting or if not available, some other stronger in- team members, while having some seconds time because currently not part of or not performing that quite difficult jump , throw or pyramid sequence.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

I do not think a spotter or two could of stopped the neck injury, but a harness would have allow the flipper to land correctly with lots of practice as they do in most new world gymnastic gyms.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

when i was a child decades ago the same thing happened in my school, huge scandal and the school closed because of this 3 years later.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Patently negligent. Sue them by all means, the girl will need the money to help support her through life but those responsible need to at the least be fired and banned from ever being involved even peripherally with this type of work. If possible they need to be charged with criminal negligence or what ever the equivalent is under the Japanese legal system.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

No need to wait for the process to play itself out, the judge is going to say, "While the school was extremely negligent and this is their fault, and the result is regrettable, we cannot find them guilty. We do recognize that as a result of their guilt, however, that a young girl is paralyzed and will spend the rest of her life needing constant care and special equipment, and so I am declaring the school must pay the young woman 70,000 yen in damages. Case closed."

Oh, and she'll also get a bow and "moushiwake arimasen" from the teacher who is forced to take responsibility, and explanations that they had no idea it was happening from school and BOE. And when the time comes for her to graduate, the school will boast about how diverse they are and have "handicapped" students graduating, taking photos as they hand her her certificate (probably as the principal goes down the stairs to give it to her since most schools don't have ramps in the gym).

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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