An immediate reaction to the article of two Korean boys expelled for an incident on the school bus would be a knee jerk condemnation of the school officials. Instead of going emotional, let’s attempt to ‘smack a boot to their collective heads’ using some reasonable common sense.
Thoughtless Boys Will Be Thoughtless Boys
In the first paragraph, cultural difference is mentioned as the reason the boys were playing with the airgun in the open. I am of the mindset that is a weak excuse because I am not convinced there is an element of Korean culture that will allow youths to play with toy guns as the boys did on the bus. A more plausible excuse would have been the lack maturity and responsibility from the boys. The simple fact is they behaved improperly on the school bus.
The next paragraph goes to some detail of the chain of events to what occurred. What grabs my attention is the fact that neither boy was injured from being shot at and a sheet of paper was held as a target. Nothing was said from other students on the bus. Were they terrified, angry, indifferent to the gunplay? No information was given about the airgun, but, my experience (and the article mentions the bottle of blue pellets) suggests it was a spring powered airsoft. A brief lesson of airsofts can be found here.
Match The Time With The Crime
I think community service is reasonable, but I would have specified assignment to a firearms instructor and gun range as opposed to trash cleanup or some other unrelated task. At a gun range with the firearms instructor, the boys would realize just how important gun safety and etiquette is needed. Ten days is two school weeks lost. Two or three days would have been sufficient.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, School Boards of the Stupid
Not satisfied with the two weeks suspension and ignoring most of the boys’ scholastic achievement, the bubble-headed school board expelled them for the first half of their freshman year in a closed session. They claim they were interested for all of the students’ safety. I think it was more irrational fear and loathing of anything resembling in appearance of a firearm or the mere mention of the word in any variation. Too bad the boys did not incite a food fight by mashing quiche muffins into another student’s hair or flinging moon pies across the bus.
The cultural differences I see are immigrant families striving to get the best education for their children and the public school system too busy protecting their hold of ignorant policies.
As reported in the Northwest Herald, a student has been suspended from school and charged with disorderly conduct for writing an essay with “nonspecific references to violence.”
Last week during a drive to North Carolina I listened to an audiobook version of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” a book I’d always meant to read. The recent death of the author brought it to my attention again. So it goes. I bring it up because I recall some students at my own high school, over twenty years ago, talking about it as assigned reading in an English class. That book has some pretty specific references to violence and some coarse language to boot.
Also mentioned in the article is that the English teacher in this particular case had apparently said it was okay to use foul language in the assignment. That doesn’t suggest that the teacher was expecting, for example, a rosy puff piece about a Beloved Leader.
The part that scares me the most was this quote from the story: “‘You can never be overly cautious with any type of these situations,’ [Cary Police Chief Ron] Delelio said.” Thank goodness I don’t live in his town. I can’t imagine what I’d ever write that wouldn’t raise red flags based on that standard and still be worth reading. If you can’t be overly cautious, perhaps they should simply outlaw writing altogether.
Lawndale school having too many kids arrested, group says
A community coalition is protesting excessive student arrests at Lawndale schools. Things came to a head when they brought their protest to Roswell B. Mason Elementary during a school board meeting on Wednesday. The principal denied that too many students are being arrested at the school and then had two of the protesters arrested.
The North Lawndale Accountability Commission has been picketing Mason, at 1830 S. Keeler, since last week, citing information the coalition says it received from the local police district. That data purports more than 250 children were arrested at the school in the past few years. Chicago Public Schools officials dispute that figure.
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“They’re literally prosecuting these children, fingerprinting and mugshotting them and locking them up before even calling parents. What they’ve done is taken away parents’ constitutional rights,” said the Rev. M.G. Hunter, whose 12-year-old niece, an honor roll student, was arrested at Mason last month after arguing with a substitute teacher.
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Student expelled for hand signals
Expelled Dirksen student back in class
A photo of 15 year-old Trayla Lindsey with five friends was found in a school classroom at Dirksen Junior High School in District 86. The students were pictured in front of a locker, smiling and three of them were making claw-like gestures at the camera. School officials determined that the students were making ‘gang signs’ and suspended Trayla for 10 days for engaging in ‘gang activity’.
On the day Trayla was suspended, Travis-Lindsey talked alone with a school official and then was reunited with her daughter.
“She was crying. She was just balling. She didn’t say anything. I guess she had never been in trouble, so it was more or less a shock to her. She was like, ‘10 days?’” Travis-Lindsey said.
Because she was not allowed to speak to the principal, Travis-Lindsey went to the superintendent’s office to get some answers. They immediately scheduled a hearing on the suspension, but district officials decided Trayla had to stay home for 10 days.
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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.
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Students’ lawsuit over T-shirt gains ground
A group of eighth-grade students at Beaubien Elementary School maintained that it was their right to wear T-shirts emblazoned with the word “Gifties”, their self determined nickname. Although they are high schoolers now they never gave up the fight and are about to have their day in court.
The issue centers on a 2003 vote for a class shirt at the school, 5025 N. Laramie. Students believed one concept won: The name “Gifties” written on the back and a caricature of a boy walking a dog on the front. But school administrators didn’t like the design and kept the election results secret, telling students to take another vote, according to the federal complaint.
The students, who were in the gifted program, challenged the election and asked the school to disclose the results. Students and parents said they didn’t get anywhere, so students decided to wear the “Gifties” design they believed won.
Though students were asked not to wear the design to school, they wore the shirts anyway in protest.
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PCHS student arrested for threat
A 14 year-old student at Pekin Community High School was arrested for disorderly conduct at school. The case was then referred to Tazewell County State’s Attorney Stewart Umholtz.
According to [Pekin Police press information officer Chris] Bitner, the student made vague threats that he planned to commit a violent act at school.
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Pekin Community High School District 303 Superintendent Ken Schwab declined to comment on the specific case but said the district is ready for such situations.
“We have a whole array of policies,” Schwab said.
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Judge: Let BB-gun boy in school
A Sauk Village boy who had been expelled for having a BB-gun at school found some tolerance from Cook County Circuit Judge David Donnersberger. His Honor issued a permanent injunction, ending the two year expulsion the boy was serving.
“Bringing a gun, a BB gun even, is a serious infraction of the law. The school board was justified in expelling him for a period of time,” he said.
However, the penalty of “three months out of school was even more severe than these actions warrant,” he said.
Let the punishment fit the crime? There’s no place for such sanity in zero tolerance. Apparently there’s no place for sanity in the school district at all.
School district attorney Kristi Bowman said the district is likely to appeal the ruling.
“Bringing a gun to school is a very serious offense,” she said. “A school should not have to wait for a child to use that gun to exact a serious punishment.”
Let me paraphrase that. “We should be allowed to punish children for what they are capable of, not just what we catch them doing.”
The District 168 school board expelled the boy for two years in March after a teacher noticed him and some friends playing with BBs and found the pellet gun in the boy’s bag, the judge said.
In accordance with state statute, the boy, then 9, was barred by the school board from attending an Illinois public school until March 2006, the judge said.
Had the expulsion gone unchallenged, the boy would have returned to fourth grade an “untutored, untrained and unsocialized boy of 11,” the judge said.
The judge himself did not rule on the legality of expelling the boy when there was no other education available from the state.
North Boone Student Expelled
Suspended 7th-grader may not come back
A North Boone School District student used a pea-shooter on his school bus. The district’s zero tolerance policy classifies the empty pen tube as a weapon so the school board expelled the 12-year-old.
Angela Taillet agrees there should be some type of punishment but she believes expelling her son from school is too harsh.
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“The items they were using were not causing bodily harm, (it was) just children being children. No difference than if they were shooting spitballs across the bus,” said Taillet.
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Young non-drinkers decry Naperville law
Naperville has a unique law that allows police to ticket underage people for drinking even when they’re not drinking. All a person under 21 has to do to get a ticket is to be in the same area as an underage drinker.
In the last six months, Julie Beata, 19, said she has received two citations from Naperville police for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Both times, said the North Central College freshman, she was picking up underage friends who had had a few drinks at a party.
The law is being criticized for encouraging underage people to drink when around other underage drinkers since non-drinkers receive the same punishment as those who are actually drinking. It is also seen as encouraging drinking and driving as it discourages non-drinkers from picking up their friends that imbibe and reduces the number of sober drivers at a gathering.
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