This article in the Arizona Republic goes over the persecution of a 14 year old boy for a series of drawings. I have to say that this kind of stuff drives me nuts. It strikes me as antithetical to what we are supposed to stand for. It also just defies common sense.
Let me get this straight for everyone. If you bring Tylenol to school you are not a drug user in the illegal sense of the word. You are not dangerous because you draw a gun, utter the word gun or because you utter an empty threat against the football team because they bully you.
It is a time honored tradition for nerdy kids to hate athletes. Some deal with this by dreaming of the object of their scorn as fat, balding and working a convenient store while they are graduating from Harvard. Some dream about shooting them... How many of us saw the movie Heathers while were in high school and did not smile at least a little bit when Christian Slater pulled out the gun filled with blanks and shot at two football players? How many of us hurt anyone?
Thoughts do not make you a criminal, actions do. When a student starts purchasing guns, ammunition and explosives, that is when they are a criminal, but not before. No one condones violence, but we should not protect kids from violence by placing them in a de facto police state where certain thoughts are verboten, if not illegal.
UPDATE: There was also this article.
How does the school have the authority to suspend kids who did something illegal when they were not at school? Arrest them, they did something illegal, but the school should not have authority beyond that. The police should notify the school, maybe, but nothing beyond that. It is like my friend who was fired from his job doing procurement because he got a DUI one Saturday night. Wasn't the jail time (in tent city) and the several thousand dollars in fines, not to mention his near inability to get car insurance enough punishment? You also have to take the guy's livelihood? BTW -- Another guy in his department was convicted of assaulting his ex-wife and was not fired, no company policy on beating your wife.
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By law, under 'in loco parentis' (in place of the parents) schools are legally responsible for students from 'door to door'. If the students had not gone home before the 'bombing', the school still had jurisdiction over them.
Whether the school has gone too far or if the kids should face prosecution is another story. (this was not done in a desert, but from a balcony at an apartment complex, and that does violate the rights and safety of others)
I agree with you about suspension for the drawing of a gun. Plain stupid. I don't know how many times I dre pictures of guns, knives, tanks, machine guns, bombers, war, etc when I was that age.
Shit, let kids be kids.
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