In my browsing, I stumbled on Scary Story. Seems this kid in Highschool wrote a short story about a generic highschool being overrun by Zombies.
So, he is being charged, and held for $5,000 bail. For writing a short story. For his English class. Wow.
So, I started to do some research, and I found This Site. Some good stuff there about the fear culture that we currently live in...
-Tsyko
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3 comments:
Just goes to prove the old saying: When Zombies are outlawed only outlaws will have Zombies.
Seriously though, Zero Tolerance policies by their very nature are going to cause really stupid decisions to be made.
(I posted this to the site-link about the fear culture.)
I have kids in public school. I would darn well like to know that the students around them have enough sense to report the threat-makers when we're talking about BOMBS. There is a huge difference between "ratting" on someone for a minor infraction, and going to the authorities with information about bomb threats made against public buildings.
Many of the rants posted so far here with this article are examples of people who have no use for the school system, people who feel the USA is somehow drifting towards a Nazi Germany type of government just because we have laws, or people who want to offer legal interpretations of the issues presented. The issue here is far more basic...
...it's called "social conscience."
There's a big difference between reporting red-light-runners and kids who smoke a little pot (or, maybe even a lot of pot), and reporting kids who make bomb threats; kids who think it is somehow funny in this day-and-age of school shootings and terrorists flying planes into buildings to call in bomb threats at public institutions.
Is the discipline too harsh (a year of suspension)? Maybe...but the notion that these kids are doing something noble by not reporting what they know about the bomb threats is unconscionable.
I agree that all credable threats should be investigated. I do not agree with knee-jerk reactions like
"A fourth-grade student at Wakelee Elementary School in the Wolcott School District was suspended for 10 days for violating the school's zero tolerance policy against weapons. His mother had packed a Boy Scout utensil kit with his lunch.
His mother, Rebecca Glendening, said she thought she had removed the knife attached to the kit, but instead she had mistakenly removed a can-opener tool."
(from that site)
or the Zombie story that I wrote about. One of my big beefs is that people are being lead to belive that anything that they feel is remotely diffrent should be slapped. If I write a story about Zombies, or if I play a D&D game set in a 'school' - should I be cuffed in front of my peers and hauled off to jail?
There has to be some common sense applied. It's like the people who think that if you read Harry Potter you are a Satanist.
We cannot react to all threats equally - there has to be some triage going on. A bomb threat does not equal a short story about zombies.
Heh - sorry - rant mode off ;)
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