Fist Bump was watched early while it was being shown at the Slamdance Film Festival.
At some point, fist bumping became all of the rage. It was cooler than hand shakes or waves. It gave a physical bit of touch, and some people did fun extra stuff after the fact, like explosions. It was already big before Big Hero 6 came out, but I do think that movie knocked it up another level.
In this aptly named documentary, we get to meet Marcus Knight, who was born early after just 22 weeks. This lead to a hard start for Marcus, who also was diagnosed with both cerebral palsy, and autism. Now, despite any setbacks from this, Marcus has lived his life to the fullest. In high school, he had friends, went to prom, played sports, and was well liked. The model, happy student. He even received a full scholarship to Saddleback Community College, which was close to his home. Going and getting a college degree was certainly one of his dreams.
And you know what? It started out okay.
But within a week of going to classes, the college let him know of complaints reported about him. About making an unsafe or creepy environment. Some people were uncomfortable with him. The complaint seemed to come about him asking someone for a fist bump.
You see, Marcus loves giving fist bumps, but he is never harasses people about it. He offers them to lots of people, and if they say no, he doesn’t push it. That is annoying of course for this to happen to him, because they then require him to bring an aide with him at the school, which he has not needed.
Unfortunately, later, again he gets a complaint, about harassing, even sexually harassing, a fellow classmate. Because another thing he enjoys doing is taking selfies. And when he took one with another classmate, someone else in the room had a problem with it and submitted a complaint. This lead to bigger issues than before.
Honestly, I prefer their other name, Respect Knuckles.
No, not completely, they dropped it to a Title IX complaint against him on his record, that would stay with him wherever he went, despite no one on record to file a complaint at the point. He got to stay in the school, but it seemed like a school who did not want him.
This documentary is telling his story, and how the school system tried to punish a kid with disabilities, because he didn’t fit in with the standard way other students fit in at the university. And it includes the legal fights after the fact, in the courts, to remove this mark from his record.
Now I will admit, I was a bit worried going into the documentary, because I saw it was about someone defending themself from sexual harassment, and it would be from his point of view only. Very suspicious, especially post Me Too. I was worried about this thing being biased and one sided. Like of course his mom and friends would say he would never do something like this. But thankfully, it also comes with facts, and knowledge, with there being no one to officially even have a complaint about the incident. Unless she was coerced after the fact and threatened to drop it (which, wouldn’t really happen in real life with these people I imagine). That sort of evidence is enough to believe his story, and well, puts the school in a really bad light.
These stories are very important. It is not the first time a college would try to wipe its hands of a student/incident, and act like nothing could be done. And these organizations can be real shit heads. The more people hear about this, the better we can get about stopping these incidents. And the fact that it appears this college was trying to bully a student with disabilities, while also patting itself on the back for inviting him to their campus is really deplorable.