Raven-Symoné Takes A Bizarre Stance On The Spring Valley High Assault

By now, you've probably seen the viral video footage from Spring Valley High School in South Carolina, which shows Sheriff's Deputy Ben Fields literally dragging a teen girl out of her desk and knocking her to the floor in the process. (And if you haven't — sensitive folks, prepare yourself for a pretty graphic 15 seconds.) The subject popped up on After The View during the post-show discussion of hot topics, when Raven-Symoné predictably continued her fruitful streak of controversial commentary. While Symoné admitted that the officer had obviously used excessive force, she also said that this wasn't all his fault, pointing out that the unnamed high schooler was wrong in having her phone out and not following directions in the first place. "The girl was told multiple times to get off the phone," she told her co-hosts during the segment, which you can watch in the clip below. "There’s not right or reason for him to be doing this type of harm, that’s ridiculous." Hold on, though — she didn't stop there. “But at the same time, you gotta follow the rules in school," she stated. "First of all, why are there cell phones in school? This shouldn’t even be a problem to begin with, and he shouldn’t have been acting like that on top of it.” Let's just get one thing straight here: That teenager may have been flouting authority. But she wasn't contributing to an environment of violence. She may have had her cell phone out against the rules. But there is nothing — nothing — that can justify the fact that Officer Fields (who, by the way, reportedly has a history of unfairly targeting Black students) slammed her to the ground when she was sitting quietly, however defiantly, at her desk. Furthermore, Raven-Symoné needs to get with the program about cell phones in schools. It's 2015. Kids might be cautioned to keep their phones turned off or put away, but it's unrealistic to think that that we're going to return to a time when they just leave their iPhones and Androids at home. In fact, this entire fiasco is an obvious argument for kids being allowed to have their phones at school. Had another child in class not caught the incident on video, the female student might have had to suffer the outrageous incident silently. That student who had the good sense to record what happened has been taken into custody for allegedly "disturbing the school." Something is clearly rotten at Spring Valley High.