Kid suspended for drawing a gun

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

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The schools in the state may be on alert because of issues like these above. Maybe that's why the punishment seems harsh. In context with stories like these (granted the 2nd story doesn't say if it's the students or not) I find what the school did to that kid to be just.

Because other people have done awful things, otherwise innocent people are persecuted. Sounds really familiar to me.

In any case, you've already answered the question regarding the hypothetical, and you believe that suspension teaches the appropriate lessons, so there's not much more to be said. I totally disagree with you.

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

Distrust, yes. But are you emotionally scarred by the incident and more likely to become a Columbine-esque murderer because of it? I'm thinking, no. But you do remember the suspension, don't you?

I'm surprised at this response. In reading Erica's post again -

Originally Posted by blueerica

My biggest problem was how angry I felt toward the school administration for my seemingly excessive punishment in relation to my crime. Had I been having other issues who knows where it could have led. It was in my senior year of high school, and I still carry a distrust of authority that I have no doubt was only affirmed by my incident.

She didn't say that she learned that the prank was wrong, she said she learned that schools punish pranks excessively, and that if she had other issues with authority, it would have made things worse. I fully agree with this.

Originally Posted by GC

Because I didn't do messed up things.

Thing is, I did messed up things. I didn't want to bring this up but here goes....I once wrote a threat, regarding a teacher, on a desk in pencil. I said I wanted to kick him in the balls. Yeah, not smart. I had an odd communication with a kid in the same classroom at a different period, writing pencil notes on the desk. The other kid said they wanted to bring in a gun and kill the teacher, and I said I'd kick him in the balls.

OH MY GOODNESS, OBVIOUSLY THESE CHILDREN ARE A DANGER TO THOSE AROUND THEM!!! OBVIOUSLY THEY ARE GOING TO KILL PEOPLE!!!

I can't speak for the other girl, whom I met later. She had many other warning signs floating around her. I'm sure she could have benefitted from a talk (not a talking TO, but a counseling session). I, however, had never been in trouble before. I had never been in the principal's office. I had never been suspended. But here I was, sobbing in the office, because they were coming down hard on me, and I had no prior experience in dealing with them.

I was suspended for a day. I didn't care about that - it was all about having to tell my parents such a dumb story and having to face the wrath of the staff. I didn't care about my record that much, as I was never the college-bound type.

Thing was, the teacher deserved a kick in the balls, since he was a total prick. Not that I would have ever done such a thing. I've never purposely kicked anyone in the balls, not even my annoying brothers in the middle of a wrestling match. It's not something I would do.

Thinking on it now, I realize what I learned from that situation. People think about doing awful things their whole lives....they may despise their coworkers, their family may drive them crazy, they may hate their spouse or their boss or their local mailman.....but we have to pretend we don't feel these things. We have to bottle this crap up and smile and eat sh.t. We need to keep our conflicting emotions and needs inside until it eats the bottom out of our stomachs. We have to bend our values in order to lick the ass of the alpha person in our committee. All of this starts with the institution called school, where we learn how all institutions work. There is no room for honesty in such an environment - only for compliance.

I could not act out against the charlatans of the school environment. I had no recourse. I was stuck in the system and if the teacher was incompetent or apathetic or just a power-hungry prick I still had to visit their little show every day for 9 months. I did my share of changing classes and bringing mom in to get me shifted about but in the end, you're going to have some jerks, and if it's not the teachers, it's the administration.

My bottled rage came out in drawings and writings and yes, scribbled threats. Seeing as how I'd never have the nerve to break the "no Discmans" rule, it was pretty obvious that my drawings involving voodoo dolls and hangman's nooses weren't going to come to fruition. My frustrations are as real as anyone else's on this planet, and just as suppressed.

Back on topic, slightly - if I had not been able to express myself at all in doodles, wherever they land on the scale of wrongness, my rage would have grown. My frustration with the system would have grown. My need to act out would have grown.

Suppression is suppression and it doesn't bode well.

One more thing, GC - I've asked before, where does it end? Where do you draw the line as something that's ok to draw on your homework? When is it time to tattle, to persecute, to control?

[Gemini Cricket]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Back on topic, slightly - if I had not been able to express myself at all in doodles, wherever they land on the scale of wrongness, my rage would have grown. My frustration with the system would have grown. My need to act out would have grown.

Suppression is suppression and it doesn't bode well.

One more thing, GC - I've asked before, where does it end? Where do you draw the line as something that's ok to draw on your homework? When is it time to tattle, to persecute, to control?

So doodle, create, do what you need to but there's a place for that. And putting a picture of a gun on a piece of paper that is going to be seen by a teacher is not appropriate. It, like the last line in the article says, disrupts the process.

I don't see this as an act of suppression. I see it as a lesson of appropriateness in a period of time post-Columbine. Your friend's comment (bringing a gun in to kill a teacher) may not have been taken seriously at all back then, nowdays it would be. A kid saying that stuff now would be seen as a danger to those around her.

It's a different time from when we were in school. There weren't huge shooting sprees in schools when I was a kid. Now there are.

And, to answer your question, unless it's stipulated in the homework itself, it's never okay to turn in homework with doodles on it. At least that's the way it was in my school. You'd get your paper handed back to you and you'd have to re-write the entire thing.

Anytime there's an occurrance that is threatening or can be miscontrued as a threat, that's when it's okay for the school to address it. There are varying degrees of penalty, but there needs to be some sort of sense of accountability for someone's actions. If there isn't, then it gives the message that it's okay to continue that behavior.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

I don't see this as an act of suppression. I see it as a lesson of appropriateness in a period of time post-Columbine. Your friend's comment (bringing a gun in to kill a teacher) may not have been taken seriously at all back then, nowdays it would be. A kid saying that stuff now would be seen as a danger to those around her.

It was taken seriously and as I understood it, her actual-threat-to-a-teacher's-life got her much more punishment than I got. In fact, I believe we were both treated with punishments equal to what we actually did, shock of shocks, since we both had actual threats involved. Yes, it wasn't the same.

Originally Posted by GC

It's a different time from when we were in school. There weren't huge shooting sprees in schools when I was a kid. Now there are.

There's the heart of it, right there. I personally don't think that changing our fear level actually prevents anything. I personally think that measures like these are just a lot of posturing, much like supposed bag searches that don't do a thorough job. It's all icing on a rotten cake.

I don't think anything has changed. I feel the same way in a post-Columbine world as I do in a post-9/11 world - that others have used these tragedies to steal freedoms. That the measures taken don't protect or help anybody. That we are feeding on our own fears and are making things worse. That the terrorists and the Columbine kids did achieve something - they made America into a land of quivering cowards who feel better when people in authority overstep their bounds.

And, to answer your question, unless it's stipulated in the homework itself, it's never okay to turn in homework with doodles on it. At least that's the way it was in my school. You'd get your paper handed back to you and you'd have to re-write the entire thing.

Yeech. All your teachers were like that? You went to public school? When I think of all the art I saw on other people's papers...

Anytime there's an occurrance that is threatening or can be miscontrued as a threat, that's when it's okay for the school to address it. There are varying degrees of penalty, but there needs to be some sort of sense of accountability for someone's actions. If there isn't, then it gives the message that it's okay to continue that behavior.

Again, you're sticking to general concepts, and I want to know where the cutoff is. If I doodle something on my TrapperKeeper, and someone overreacts to it, is that ok for the school to interfere? I've mentioned many different things....knives, scissors....how about an iron maiden, or a cowboy brandishing a pistol? Can you, GC, you personally, draw a line as to what is permissible and what is a threat, or is that at the mercy of whatever fear-ridden shmuck decides is a threat to them? Is it ever ok to say to that shmuck, "You're being a shmuck, just calm the fvck down, it's a goddamned doodle"?

If you cannot draw an objective line, you cannot enforce it, and if you cannot enforce it, it must be thrown out as subjective posturing BS, in my humble opinion.

However, I'd like to restate that if a child seemingly has actual issues, they need counseling.