Having already awarded this weeks moron-of-the-week award, I can’t nominate these girls for it. Alas.
However, taking photographs of oneself in the process of committing a felony, especially one for which one is already on probation, is not the behavior I’d expect from an honors student.
Publicizing said photographs on the web, on a public website, brings poor judgement to new levels.
What part of “probation” did these girls not understand?
As an aside - let me say that I’m aware that there are arguments to be made for changing drinking laws in the US, and the various states. It’s not my intent to defend the laws the judge was enforcing. Just pointing out that the level of stupidity here, on the girls’ part was almost Darwinian.
I’ve got to agree. i personally don’t much care for the current drinking age, but for God’s sake, if you’re going to violate parole, do not publish it. Talk all the smack about the judge you want, but do not take out newspaper ads or run television commercials during the superbowl depicting your lawbreaking. And you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that thsi judge does a lot of Google searches for “Michael Martone.”
The jail time is for violating the terms of a court order. That takes the behavior to a whole 'nother level where such a penalty is not at all out of proportion to the offense.
The jail time is for drinking. Trying to hide that behind the veil of violating a court order doesn’t fly with me. Especially considering the court order in this case was:
Thats absolutely ridiculous. In order to comply with that ruling I would have had to vacate my dorm room for most of Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights while avoiding most social occasions. These girls had every right to violate the order although I agree, putting it on the internet was a dumb thing to do. However, this Judge needs to get off of his high horse and quit being petty.
Forgive me, but while I was in college, both as a minor and afterwards, each school in question had an official “no drinks” policy.
So, the people who should have vacated were not the girls subjected to the order, and if they’d had the intestinal fortitude to accept the ostraziation that would go with it, could have insisted that their dorm room remain teatotal.
No one has to drink in college.
For that matter, it was pretty damned easy for me to explain to my under-aged roommate, and his friends, when I was over 21 and living with a 19 yo, that I didn’t care whether they drank, just give me some plausable deniability. If the girls wanted to avoid booze, they could have.
No one holds a gun to your head and makes you put up with booze in your dorm room. That puppy won’t run, treis.
The girls, for that matter, could have drunk as much as they wanted, if they didn’t post the pictures on the effing web. And link it to the judge’s name. He tried giving them a slap on the wrist. They told him “F U Martone.”
Yeah? Any my RA came out drinking with us once. Official policies often have little bearing on actualy practice.
I see, so these girls should have accepted being ostracized for their first 2-3 years of college becuase some moron Judge made an absurd ruling. Thats simply a ridiculous punishment for drinking at the prom and no one in their right mind would follow it.
No one has to do anything.
How dare you let crimes occur without reporting them in your own home? On top of that how dare you try and shirk your responsibility with plausable dinability?
That puppy is frolicking in a field baby. A sentence to avoid all places where alcoohl is served or consumed for a college student is basically a sentence to avoid socializing on the weekends. Most college students y’know enjoy having friends and y’know not sitting cooped up in their room all weekend. While there might not be a gun to their head there certainly is a great deal of pressure.
I have to agree with… hmm… everybody. Creating a site about the court order you’re violating is deeply, deeply stupid. But I can’t say anything good about the judge here either. This sure sounds like the kind of conflict that obliges you to recuse yourself from a case.
Probation is a punishment intended to restrict the activities one may legally engage in. To argue that restricting what the drunks could do because they were only on probation is absurd.
And they were charged with contempt of court when brought back before the judge. What reason would he have to recuse himself from their case? The fact that they’d been contemptuous of him and his court? If that were so, no judge would ever be able to hear a contempt charge regarding his own rulings.
Smart of them to yank the girl out of MSU, though. Had she returned, she’d certainly have been facing more censure for violating the school’s alcohol policy. At least we’re spared another article where her parents admit she did wrong but that the punishment was “unfair”.
Deeply deeply stupid to violate a court order and then create a website about it, mentioning the judge’s name right in it.
I also think that our policy towards underage drinking is idiotic, teaches kids nothing about being responsible drinkers, and makes alcohol an exotic, desirable thing to binge on once you can get away with it. Maybe if youngsters could get a drink of wine with dinner, or a beer here and there or have a safe party with alcohol, they wouldn’t feel as much of a need to get loaded on prom night. Nah, can’t have that, we need laws that make it OK for a 20 year old to go to war, fight and die for our country, but he’s not trustworthy enough to buy a sixpack.
She got hauled into court and put on probation for blowing a .02. It’s a zero tolerance law, and those are rarely good laws, they’re fearful crap laws that punish people for having a sip of booze in a limo on the way to the prom.
I agree that the drinking age is too high – a drinking age of 18 would probably do much to put an end to things like binge drinking.
However, the girls were monumentally stupid. They were under probation, subject to conditions. They not only ignored those conditions, they put pictures of themselves violating probation on the Internet. And they mentioned the judge by name.
There is no advantage in pissing off a judge, especially when you’re subject to his probation order.
Even if it was overkill to pull them in under the “zero tolerance” policy (which is always a stupid policy), the fact remains that if they had the slightest bit of intelligence, they would have known not to put those pictures and comments in a public forum where the judge (or someone who knew the judge) could possibly see them.
Zero tolerance is stupid, but these girls make it look like a brilliant idea.
Also, “Zero Tolerance” is a lot more dangerous. If that girl had a friend who’d had several too many, and was wondering if the friend would be all right, she might not err on the side of caution.
Actually this firl would. She published the fact that she was violating, after all.
No, Treis, they did not have any right whatsoever to violate the order. None. Period, end of statement. They could have appealed it, but as long as it was in force, they were compelled to obey it. They chose not to.
Actions have consequences. Their actions brought about the ensuing consequences.
Yes, they could have spent thousands of dollars, many hours of their time, and waited months or years to appeal. Or, they could ignore this absurd and ridiculous ruling.
Sorry, you don’t get to force ridiculous consequences onto a person, then cluck your tongue for not following them.
They might not agree with the ruling, but they were very stupid to disregard it and then broadcast their illegal activity to anyone with a computer.
To me the funniest/saddest part was when the girl said she wants to go into criminal justice. She apparently cares nothing for the rule of law, I agree with the judge that she really should consider a different line of work.
Those girls deserved everything they got. Not for drinking, but for their attention-whoring, idiotic display of disrespect for their ruling and the law. They weren’t making a political statement, they were simply being nasty cunts about it.
Aren’t subsequent punishments for violating probation terms agreed upon at time the probation is sentenced? Or am I just crazy?
I do. Judges are trained to be impartial. They are “only human” and therefore will not always be able to be impartial under all circumstances, but I certainly see no reason to assume in this case that because the idiot girls’ web site specifically taunted him that he is therefore incapable of impartiality. Just because you may think that in a similar situation you would be driven by nothing but your ego, doesn’t mean that everyone else would be. I’m not a judge, but I can easily imagine myself in such a situation, being more concerned with the girls’ disregard for the legal system than with their personal attack on me.