Let's see, in the "I-can-behave-outrageously-and-still-keep-my-paycheck" category, we now have, in addition to Goose Creek Principal McCrakin and FDR High Assistant Principal Knoll, North Carolina science teacher Jeff Ferguson, who decided to demonstrate the body's ability to neutralize acids in milk by making his students drink it until they vomited. Sure, participation was voluntary, and only five of the 42 students actually threw up, but still. Joanne Jacobs calls it "an educational experience for all, especially for the teacher, who's been suspended." With pay, I might add.
Of course, students aren't always angels themselves. In New Zealand, one enterprising female bully set up a website that invited and encouraged other students to leave nasty messages about another girl at her school. Allegedly the result of a "schoolyard spat," the website quickly became evidence of some very ugly behavior:
[A newspaper] said the website's home page contained "foul comments" about the victim, and included a guest book filled with similar comments from fellow students as well as threats to "bomb" her computer with viruses.
Liz Butterfield, director of the Internet Safety Group, told the paper it was one of New Zealand's nastiest examples of the developing phenomenon of "cyber bullying".
She said while it was becoming increasingly common for children to abuse each other through mobile texting and email, she had not previously heard of someone devoting a website to such attacks and encouraging others to join in. "I think it's the nastiest kind of thing that you could throw at somebody," she said. "I would call it at the very high end of bullying."
There's yet another entry in the "If-I-fake-a-hate-crime, I-help-validate-real-crimes!" category as well. A Northwestern University student has been charged with felony disorderly conduct after it was determined that he faked racist graffiti and a knife attack (free subscrip required):
Jaime Alexander "Xander" Saide, 19, told his story to hundreds of Northwestern students at a campus rally against discrimination...Saide had told police that on Nov. 4 he found anti-Hispanic slurs including the word "die" written on a wall and a poster near his room in Chapin Residential College. On Nov. 8, he told police, a man grabbed him from behind and put a knife to his throat as he walked to his dormitory after visiting friends. He said the man whispered an anti-Hispanic epithet in his ear before running off...
Police questioned Saide's story from the beginning, Kaminski said...
Police declined to discuss the circumstances of Saide's alleged admission [that the stories were fake]. On Tuesday, Saide was released after posting $300 bail, officials said...
Tuesday's edition of the campus newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, includes an essay that Saide wrote in which he described himself as the son of an interracial couple who thought he would escape discrimination because of his light skin and green eyes. Student editors said they learned of his arrest after the essay was published...
Alexander Rabbit Magalli, 18, a freshman, said Saide had good intentions, "but it was the wrong way to go about it. ... I hope this doesn't hurt the cause."
Unfortunately for Magalli, every such incident does hurt the cause. The more fake racial crimes that occur, the more willing people will be to dismiss or suspect the real ones.
And then there's this unnamed 15-year-old in North Carolina who, to let his therapist tell it, has just been exploring his fantasies, and is "merely a big talker, with a low chance of hurting himself or others." (Free subscrip required to access the story.) Nevertheless, he's been in juvenile detention since October 22nd, and has just been released to his parent's custody (under what is essentially house arrest). He's also banned from going to his school - indeed, from approaching any school.
Another victim of a draconian zero-tolerance policy? Well, perhaps not:
Last month police said they uncovered a plot to explode homemade napalm at Concord High and on school buses while they were investigating an unrelated and unfounded bomb threat.
Police searched the boy and his home. They said they found detailed maps of the school, notes about where to place bombs and burn marks where the boy had tested chemicals.
Police also said they found what the boy had labeled a "corpse list" naming more than 20 people, including himself, whom police say the boy intended to hurt.
The psychologist saw no problem with this:
"Kids who don't have a lot of confidence sometimes become interested in fringe subjects: war paraphernalia, explosives," Sultan responded. "In a 30-year-old it would strike me as unusual, but not at his age."
What about the "corpse list" and notes about where to plant the bombs at school? Is that also not unusual for a 15-year-old?
Posted by kswygert at November 20, 2003 11:28 AM