Making a list and checking it twice
Female Student Accused of Writing Hit List - Indiana. A freshman at West Vigo High School is accused of making a hit list with over 40 names on it. She will likely be expelled.
Middletown Student Discovered With A “Hit List” - Ohio. A student at Middletown High School made a hit list and it was discovered by another student. He was immediately removed from the school property and suspended. He faces expulsion and criminal charges.
Channelview “hit list” student pleads guilty - Texas. Channelview High School junior Christopher Hayes made a list. He was suspended and charged with several counts including making a terrorist threat. He plead guilty and was fined $300 and sentenced to two years of probation.
Lely student on probation after plea agreement - Florida. Elwood June and two other Lely High School students were accused of plotting an attack on their school. Elwood had a hit list. The boys were expelled and faced felony criminal charges. Elwood is on probation until he turns 19 and will be performing 100 hours of community service.
Joplin student removed from school for making ‘hit list’ - Missouri. A 14 year old girl at Joplin High School made a list with 16 people on it. She’s in police custody.
‘Hit list’ turns up at school - California. Two boys, 17 and 16 years old, made a list. They are being held at Riverside County Juvenile Hall, charged with felonies.
Two students expelled for creating ‘hit list’ - Michigan. Three boys were involved in this list. Two were expelled. The other is a special needs student so will have punishment fitting the convoluted laws involved there.
There are more. Many, many more. They have certain aspects in common as well, the most important being that in each case the student posed no actual credible threat. Kids talking big. Kids putting their frustration down on paper. Kids bitching and joking with each other about people they don’t like.
In a pre-Columbine world these stories wouldn’t be in the paper. The kids wouldn’t be suspended, expelled and arrested. They shouldn’t be now either. The fantastic over-reactions evident in every one of these stories are due to fear. Fear can be healthy in the right dose but the paralyzing and reactive policies that are generated by the terror evident here is sickening in every sense of the word.
Yes, threats must be taken seriously but when you have determined that there wasn’t any real threat you MUST stop treating it like it was one.
I’m sorry, but you are wrong. Before Columbine a “hit” list was always a serious concern. The kid was, of course, disciplined and it usually involved the police. Once they are involved the schools have little to do with it except to expel or suspend the kid. As they should do! If a kid is so disturbed as to make a list of kids to “hit” (meaning kill), they need extra help. The courts will provide that help. The schools offer a “hunting ground” to kill those on the list.
Post Columbine we have realized that these kids can do what they claim. We must take all of the hit lists seriously and discipline the kids.
barry
I completely agree that a credible threat must be dealt with. My problem is when it is discovered that a possible threat is not credible the situation is still treated as a threat. The punishment for making a list is the same whether the kid was actually planning and preparing or if it was a playground boast.
Thank God I was finished with government schools in the early 70’s, before these folks managed to shove their craniums so far up their rectums. A couple of my friends and I made up an “Enemies List” - a la President Nixon - as a joke; obviously the morons running the asylum these days wouldn’t have understood that at all.
BTW - we did get disciplined for the “Enemies List,” but fortuntately for us common sense hadn’t flown right out the window yet, and we did not end up with criminal records.
Me and most of my friends made Target lists. they often filled several pages of our note books. not just the list mind you but we would a cockpit like screan and have several “Buttons” drawn with various ways of taken out who ever we were irked with at the time. No one really cared. thats what school kids did and by the look of the article still do.
How do school administrators know these were “hit lists”? Did the students actually head the list with “people I’d like to kill”? Or are they assuming that a list of people must, obviously, be a “hit list”?
I had a list of people in high school which I used as self-defense. The list had no title, but when somebody in class was picking on me, I would turn to one of my dividers and write their name on it. It usually freaked the bully out enough so he would stop.
In High School we played a game called assassin where you had the name of the person you where to “Hit” and you simple walked up to them in the hall and said bang to them. You took there piece of paper with whom they where supposed to “Hit” on it and went on. I can not imagine the uproar this game would take on now.
You know what I find amusing? How entirely correct this article is. I know the girl from the afore-mentioned Joplin situation. A teacher rifled through her backpack and found a “Haley’s Hit List” paper on it. The hilarious bit is that half of the kids on it were her friends. If the law enforcement in Joplin didn’t have such pretentious attitudes, perhaps they would have taken such things into account. Instead, she ended up in a rehab facility for a year. Over a joke. Yes, bright move, guys.