Well? Isn’t this your big chance? Lock and load, buddy!
Sailboat
Maybe the other kid is anticipating permanent expulsion for Lee. I hope this kid makes a public statement about the whole thing. And I’m dying to see what the piece actually says.
(I hope I didn’t disturb anyone’s peace with my use of the term “dying”.)
I knew a friend in college who was arrested for something like this, but years ago, before 9/11.
He was a in a low level English class, and the assignment was to write a short story from a particular perspective. The perspective he chose was that of a serial killer. He wrote about the van he used (white), the streets he watched (made up), etc.
Two days after he turned it in police showed up at his door and arrested him. He was brought down to the station and placed in a room for questioning. No one had said why he was under arrest yet. They wanted to know where the van was, what city he operated in, etc. Two detectives asked him questions for half an hour before he realized what they were talking about. It took him a while to convince them it was just a story.
It turns out the teacher read it, freaked out because she thought it was ‘too real to have been written by someone who didn’t do those things’ and called the police. He was released, and tried to go back to class. The teacher, who knew all of this, refused to talk to him, and demanded he drop the class. She refused to acknowledge that he was innocent.
People don’t understand the long term effects of this. When it’s shown to be nothing, this kids is still going to have this hanging over his head. People are still going to think of him as ‘almost cho’. It’s ridiculous that people allow this to happen.
Jeeez…that’s a terrible story! I’d have been up the district’s collective ass regarding the teacher. That’s inexcusable behavior, particularly after the kid was exhonorated.
Regarding “almost Cho”…maybe we can call my neighbor kid “faux Cho”. Kinda catchy, right?
My own “overreaction” story:
Shortly after the 9/11 deal and all the anthrax scares I was working as a manager at a big box retailer in Florida. It was the morning hours before the store opened and there was about 25 employees in the building.
Part-time teen customer service gal is sorting through the returns from the previous night and calls me over to show me some “mysterious yellow powder” on one of the boxes. I tell her that it’s just chalk/crayon dust from when they write sorting codes directly on the boxes at our warehouse. She’s still paranoid and asks “Are you suuuure it’s not anthrax?” I assure her it’s not and go back to work.
But then I get to thinking that it’d be just my luck that she tells someone above me that she reported it, I failed to do anything about it, and I get fired for not following procedure.
So I phone up the district manager so my hands are clean of it and tell him “She thinks it’s anthrax, I’m 99% positive it’s marking chalk, I don’t want to get in trouble for failing to report it, tell me how to proceed.” He agrees she’s paranoid and not to worry about it, buh-bye.
Not 5 minutes later he calls me back and says he wanted to cover his ass and called the corporate office. They want me to call the police and have someone come and check it out. Fine.
So I call the fire/police non-emergency number and tell them the same story “I got a box with some dust on it, empoyee’s concerned, I’m 99% sure it’s nothing, can you have someone drop by when they’re not busy to look at it?” Okay.
Not 10 minutes later three cop cars are in front of the building lights a flashing, the bomb team arrives, and a haz-mat team. They tell me to lock down the building and not let anyone in or out. Now I’ve got a couple dozen panicked employees on my hands asking a zillion questions wanting to leave now.
They send in a haz-mat guy in full astronaut garb (breathing tank and all) to come into the now locked-down store to inspect the box. He takes one look at it and says “That’s not anthrax. That’s just some crayon/chalk dust/powder.” :smack:
I’m just glad the local news didn’t show up.
Good gawd. And I thought I was bad on *9/12 * when my friend and my son and I were watching the coverage on tv and some jets scrambled overhead toward O’Hare airport. Sonic booms ensued. Thinking we might be experiencing another wave of attacks, we high-tailed it to the basement but not before I grabbed my carton of cigarettes and a spare lighter.
I think the manager was right to involve the police, given your lukewarm assurance of 99% positive. That means that out of a thousand incidents like yours, in 10 cases it would have been anthrax or some other toxin.
If you were sure, you had your chance to break the chain right there by doing nothing. Instead you called your supervisor, then he and everyone else in the chain covered their asses just like you were and did the same.
Next time it happens, if you’re sure it’s chalk, dip your finger in it, taste it, and tell the employee “Yup, it’s chalk.” Saves time for everyone.
So, when my books are published, should I send the teacher a copy? In the latest book, my main character takes many lives–with a gun at that–starting with a contract killing in chapter one. Does that make me a “potential Cho?”
Seriously, but wouldn’t arresting someone for what they wrote, in the absence of specific threats, be a blatant violation of their First Amendment rights?
This is the same thing that happened after Columbine, and continues to happen now and then. What are we doing to make our schools safer, make sure people with mental and emotional problems get treatment, and keep guns away from potential killers? Well, there’s that Rachel’s Challenge thing, and we’ve cracked down real hard on creative writing! :rolleyes:
Look if stifling free speech and student creativity, appealing to fear, and arresting straight A students saves just one life, isn’t it all worth it?
I can see 'em all running around like their hair’s on fire…waving their hands and dialing 911. I’d pay to see that!
Apparently, only if you happen to be East Asian of some variety.
Whew! I’m white. Everyone knows white people don’t go on shooting rampages.
Seeing as none of us have seen the essay, I think it’s all too easy to bash the teacher for overreacting. The fact that the student is Asian (or at least appears to be) is not lost on me, so we definitely need to keep an eye on how this situation develops.
Having said that, we don’t know the student’s history, or how he has interacted with this teacher in the past. The article says that no specific threats were made and nobody was mentioned by name. This doesn’t mean that the essay couldn’t have contained a veiled or nonspecific threat. Furthermore, if this is the third essay about violence that the student has submitted, maybe it is time for someone to get involved.
Frankly, I’m not sure if being an A student has anything to do with this.
Teachers are often the first people to notice odd behavior and I would cautiously state that we need to give the situation a little time to find out what exactly is going on. The school isn’t discussing his discipline history, and the kid hasn’t commented, so I feel really uneasy simply dismissing this as a shrill, knee-jerk reaction without knowing more. Three educators deemed that this situation was one that caused significant concern. I don’t know if an arrest was the correct action - in fact, pretty much everything in me says that it wasn’t - but I suspect that this essay might have been the most recent episode in a series of actions that made the teacher respond in such a way.
I think I’ve mentioned this case, but a friend of mine was fired for not acting on a suspicion of child abuse. She was a first year teacher and wasn’t sure if a comment that a student had made was indicative of something worse - in fact, she was mulling over presenting it to an administrator - and I don’t know all the details, but she was ultimately dismissed. I think the teacher did what she had to do. We can find fault with the administrative response, if it is indeed an overreaction.
And also, I’m not quite sure I get your point, athelas.
For a creative writing assignment, is there anything that a student could write that would leave you thinking this teacher did not overreact? I always thought that “creative writing” was supposed to incite “creativity”.
From here. .
I would agree with you, except that the police let him go on $75 bail and the kid admitted it was a joke. I think if there was a history that indicated this kid was fucked up, they would have kept him, either in jail or in a hospital. I’m not blaming the teacher (she’s a first year teacher); I’m blaming everyone else up the ladder.
Everyone gets into CYA mode and they turn off their common sense. Talk to his parents. Find out if he’s on medication or if he’s been exhibiting strange behavior. Talk to other students. Question him; don’t arrest him. The teacher (and subsequently, everyone else) took the most drastic steps available rather than taking a logical approach to determine what the threat truly was. And after all is said and done, their actions won’t prevent The Worst from happening again; either with this kid or with anyone else who goes off the beam.
Or are they just stupid? I knew the district’s spokesman when I was in junior high and, while he’s not as dumb as his brother, that job is better than I ever expected for him.
Er…
I am gobsmacked. I really, really had hoped that the stupidity inherent to this kind of thinking had limits.
Obviously, I was wrong.
ETA: Sailboat, considering I’m participating in this thread, which is more than I do for gun rights threads, I think it’s fair to say that I’m at least as concerned about First Amendment rights as I am about Second Amendment rights.
If you’re expecting me to use guns to go free a kid on $75 bail, no matter what the idiocy of the charges involved, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you.
Potential homework assignment:
Read Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum”
and Jackson’s “The Lottery.”
Rewrite them so that they are non-violent. Describe what becomes of their literary merit.
Fantasy violence is quite different from real life violence. Teachers are just not equipped to read minds and know who is going to act out violence. All that we can do is be observant and play our trained hunches. We can take courses on what to look for, but we may be working with 150 students a day.
BTW, I did have a student who poured memo fluid down the hallway for the purpose of setting fire to it. The day before, the principal had failed to back me up on a disciplinary measure that I took with him.
You know, I’m sure that incident took place over thirty years ago. But I still sting from the injustice of it. There were so many incidents like that one.
No teacher should have to keep a student in her or his classroom that she thinks may be violent. I had a convicted rapist in my class in high school and no one from the administration informed me. I found out by accident. These are “nicities” that are so obvious that they aren’t even written into school policy.
There ought to be a policy in schools that when a teacher is held up at gunpoint by an intruder before school, other teachers are notified that there is an early morning danger. An official police report should be filed.
Let the teachers know when the second car is stolen from the teachers’ parking lot. Don’t wait until the sixth one.
Tell the teachers when you find guns in their rooms. It’s the respectful, professional thing to do. :rolleyes:
Sorry…I wandered away from the topic. I’m not afraid of the written word in a creative assignment unless it gets personal. By this time of year, the teacher should know the students well.