Kim, 

    I'm sorry to hear that you are already being hassled. It seems to me that you really have two seperate problems: a schoolmate who is harrassing you and a principal who wants to avoid his responibility to handle the situation.  It is his responsibility to protect you (and every other student in the school from peer harrassment ) and his responsibility to establish and enforce the school's disciplinary procedures.  Leaving the decision about what should be done up to you merely gives him an easy way to avoid these unpleasant aspects of his job.  (If you insist that action be taken and the kid or his parents object, the principal will be able to say that the action is only being taken because you demanded it.  If you take a wait and see attitude and the harrassment continues, he will be able to claim that you rejected his efforts to resolve the problem. My advice is, don't let the principal get away with this.  Tell him that you will rely on his professsional judgement as to how this incident should be handled. That way, the principal will have to make the decision and handle theconsequences.  That, after all, is his job.

                                Susan