Student arrested, expelled, for possession of legal toy
Dist. 230 expels student over pellet gun
A 15-year-old freshman at Carl Sandburg High School in Consolidated School District 230 was expelled for a year for possession of an Airsoft pellet gun. Airsoft guns are 1/3 size comically styled replicas that feature a large red muzzle tip and shoot soft air pellets. The typical Airsoft gun cannot penetrate a piece of paper.
The board’s action at Thursday’s meeting stems from an incident that occurred around 6 p.m. March 9 in the Sandburg High School west parking lot.
A fellow student observed the 15-year-old male student with what looked like a weapon.
The student informed the Dean who called police. The boy was then arrested for disorderly conduct.
The weapon turned out to be an Airsoft pellet gun, District 230 spokesman Jim Sibley said.
Both Sibley and [Sgt. Charles] Cassata said the boy did not intend to harm anyone. Cassata said the pellet gun involved is legal.
“It was unintentional,” Cassata said. “He brought it there to keep it safe until he was going to give it to a boy he knew.”
No intent to harm. Unintentional violation. This warrants expelling a student for an entire calendar year?
[Board President Gloria] Yakes said it is not her policy to discuss details of student issues but said of the board’s decision, “one of our primary goals is to provide a safe environment for our students.”
…
District 230 made changes in its approach to discipline in the 2004 school year with a progressive discipline policy but situations involving weapons do not fall under this policy, Sibley said.“Certain situations as serious as this do supersede the progressive discipline program,” Sibley said, adding that those situations are spelled out in the guidelines of the policy.
Just how much safer are the students now, Mrs.Yakes? Are they more secure now that a student who was not a danger, did not commit a dangerous act, did not pose any threat whatsoever but made a juvenile mistake has been removed from the school? The answer of course is none. The only thing that you have actually done is everything in your power to destroy the public education of a 15 year-old boy.
And Mr.Sibley, just what part of this situation elevates it to the dire levels of “situations as serious as this”? Was it the fact that the toy wasn’t dangerous? Or that it was legal? Maybe because it was an unintentional violation? Perhaps the reason this situation is so serious is because the boy had no intent to harm anyone? I’m truly curious about just what is serious about this, apart from the very serious effect your administration is having on the life of a student you are supposed to be teaching.
Contact Information:
Principal Debbie Boniface
Head Dean Doug Sutor
Superintendent Dr.Patrick McMahon
Generic School Board address.
This was at 6:00 PM - school wasn’t even in session! My son is just finishing a merit badge that requires him to shoot off a model rocket. He bought all the supplies and built the rocket on Saturday. The ideal place to shoot the rocket off is the school football field. He cannot understand why I tell him, “no way!”, considering that 5 years ago, we used to allow the oldest boy to shoot off model rockets in the very same location! I truly fear that somebody would consider the rocket a weapon - ESPECIALLY considering a boy was suspended for just having the engine at school not long ago (see previous posts here at zerointelligence.net)
I’m concerned that all the resource going into model child behavior is draining the community of real police protection.
Sorry Jim… for once I have to disagree. I don’t know what this kid’s gun looked like, but these airsoft guns are real looking and are not such lightweights as you described.
For example, here is a pic of one
http://www.uncompany.com/images/uncp-hicapa5.1-sti-2t_big.jpg
I do, however, agree that intent should be considered. Typically with zero tolerance, reason and logic fly out the window, to be replaced with hard knocks.
While the expulsion seems like overkill, I have to agree with Scott. My Airsoft gun looks and feels just like a full-sized military style .45 (1911). The muzzle velocity for the HARD plastic pellets is 230 fps. It leaves a welt when you get shot at greater than 20 feet. Eye protection is a must.
This isn’t a case of a protactor being thought of as a possible weapon; the photo Scott posted looks enough like a real weapon to scare most people. With everything the schools have to keep up with, I don’t expect them to have to learn which weapons are real and which are ‘look-alikes’. I don’t think the school was wrong to call the police.
The boy is fifteen — old enough to realize that many wouldn’t know the difference. To me, this is similiar to calling in a ‘false’ bomb report. I believe he might have hoped to scare people, despite what the story wrote about ‘him wanting to keep it safe till he gave it to another boy’.
I don’t think so, Sherri. If he had wanted to scare people he would most likely have brought it to school when there were people attending. This happened at 6 o’clock in the evening, not during school hours. In any case when everybody involved on both sides agrees on a point (the student, police and school administration all agree that there was no nefarious intent) it’s best to take that point as a given.
Yes, I agree there, Jim. No nefarious intent should equal less corrective punishment, i.e. merely asking that the kid not bring the realistic gun anymore, giving him probation for scaring people etc.
Too many times these administrators and law enforcement, and really anyone for that matter, let pride get in the way of just letting something be dealt with reasonably.
”If we let this kid get off, we look like we failed and we can’t have that.”
When I was in elementary school we would take our bows and arrows to the school to shoot. ther was never a problem. (it was always well after school was out or on the weekend.) These were real bows too. Not the 120lb composite bows but 45 to 60 lb recurves. Later on in when we were in boy scouts and a little older we built an archery range at on of freinds grandparents house. I dont see what the deal is if it was after school and he wasnt threating any one.
Scott and Daryl are correct. I have an airsoft that is a perfect replica of an H&K USP 9mm. At the garage sale where I got it there were models that looked exactly like a Walther PPK, a Beretta 92, a 1911, an M16, and an H&K MP5, and all has serious heft to them. I found out the hard way how powerful they are - it shot through a cloth reinforced vinyl window shade and broke the window behind it.
That said, however, his presence on district property was unrelated to his status as a student. This is a police matter. The school board is like any other property owner in the neighborhood - school was not in session, nor was an extracurricular activity taking place, so in loco parentis doesn’t apply. The question is, what would the board have done if he was NOT a student - say an adult, or a cousin visiting from out of town? Alternatively, what if he, as a public school student, had been caught with the weapon on the property of, say, a local church? The student relationship that exists during school hours doesn’t give the board any special privileges not available to any other property owner in the city faced with a trespasser.
It is commonly accepted that school policy is in effect any time a student is on school property and/or under school supervision. It doesn’t have to be both any longer to apply in loco parentis. Increasingly, schools are claiming punitive powers well outside of those criteria and are being supported by courts and legislation.
If it had been a non-student there would have been no issue at all since the pellet gun was not a legally prohibited item. If he had been at a church there would also have been no issue at all.
Yeah, well, unfortunately for this kid, he was NOT ON school property - AFTER school hours - with an EMPTY BB gun, and he’s being suspended!
http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail4514.cfm?ID=22,38648
When will the inmates quit running the asylums? When will somebody understand that punishing a kid for not breaking the law does NOT make the schools safer?
Tori, that is totally nuts. That story belongs in its own entry.
I am currently in the process of advocating with a family to have their sons returned to school after an incident with a soft action air gun. We do not have alternate schooling available for them while they are expelled.
The one they used was different than what I saw posted through this site and a different picture is available at
http://www.lakeheadschools.ca/public/InformationReleaseFamilies05.pdf
What’s commonly accepted, Jim, isn’t necessarily right. It’s just that people let the schools get away with usurping more power than they rightfully have. The school is just another property owner, and his relationship with that property owner is separate from his relationship with the educational institution unless he’s there in his capacity as a student. OUr schools had a dress code prohibiting shorts, but they couldn’t enforce it in July against someone hanging out on the playground.
Wow, in light of the latest incident, this whole debate just got a lot more interesting, no? Obviously, even the police have difficulty distinguishing these “comically” smaller replicas from real guns. These schools should be having zero tolerance over this kind of crap. Not only for the safety of the kids and teachers in the schools, who can be easily decieved and intimidated by a kid with this kind of gun, but for the kids who might bring these “legal toys” to school and end up brain dead on life support awaiting the harvesting of their organs. There need to be other steps taken to keep this kind of thing from happening again, it won’t be a matter that is simply resolved by zero tolerance, but the zero tolerance measures should be kept in place while a new more effective measure is being developed to keep kids from making stupid decisions with guns or gun look-alikes that might cost them more than simple explusion.
‘Airsoft guns are 1/3 size comically styled replicas that feature a large red muzzle tip and shoot soft air pellets. The typical Airsoft gun cannot penetrate a piece of paper.’
That is NOT what an Airsoft gun is. This is the REAL zero intelligence going on here. That is a BB gun, not an Airsoft. Misinformation like this is what is causing Airsoft to be banned in the UK.