Yesterday the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a high school principal was justified in punishing a student who called her a douchebag because she made the totally dick move of canceling the school's battle of the bands. Now another judge has ruled that a teacher who allegedly called some high school juniors a salty word in Spanish can also be punished—just not so harshly. You may recall that Carlos Garcia, a teacher at the High School of International Business and Finance in Washington Heights, was fined $15,000 for using a word that the tabloids are too decorous to print. But we think we know what it was.
Garcia denies using the word, and his lawyer says that even if he did use it, the DOE is mistranslating it to mean the "c word, or 'fuck' and 'shit'"—when in fact "it's an average, everyday word. No matter what it meant at some point, it's now like the word 'damn' or 'hell.'" Nevertheless, Garcia was removed from the classroom and fined $15,000. When he filed his lawsuit against the city last October, lawyer Sergio Villaverde told the Daily News "the word has different meanings depending on the context in which it was used."
We're speculating that the word Garcia used is Coño, which Wikipedia tells us "is a common Spanish idiomatic expression (somewhat vulgar). Its actual meaning differs according to region or country, but in Spain and several Latin American countries it is understood as slang for the female genitalia, the vulva... Coño has become a feature of speech to express emphasis or to stress a wide variety of emotions, actually drifting from any of its original sexual references, in a situation similar to that of 'fuck' in American English. The context, speaker’s sex, pronunciation, and tone define the emotion conveyed, almost as identically done with the word 'Damn' in English."
Yesterday a Manhattan judge seemed to acknowledge the ambiguity, and cut the fine down to $1,000, calling the original penalty "disproportionate" to the crime. But in a decision obtained by the NY Post, the judge defended the DOE for fining Garcia, writing, "Although I doubt that petitioner's use of the word... tended to cause fear or physical or mental distress ... there is an insufficient legal basis for finding that the hearing officer's determination is arbitrary and capricious."
