An interesting dilemma

SouthernN'Proud

SouthernN'Proud

Southern Discomfort
Seems a couple of high school boys kept journals detailing their plans, thoughts, and/or fantasies of killing a teacher. Now they face expulsion from school, and they are suing on the grounds that it was all a prank and that these are their "private thoughts" and thus should not have been read.

The story

Thoughts? Discussion anyone?
 
Somewhere closer to the ignorant complete disregard ala pre-Columbine & the overly aggressive stop them because they might be the 0.0001% who actually follows thru on the threat is the answer.

I'd bet that a plurality, if not a majority, have fantasized about killing someone & virtually none of them has done a thing.

Better threat assesment & fewer lawsuits, especially if there was no specific intentional disregard of a threat is what is needed. Not more kids being booted for being hormonally deranged psychopatchic teenagers. That & fewer parents allowing kids to become desensitized to violence.
 
Writing journals about it is a little far from saying "He needs killin'". As far as right to privacy goes, this was a grading assignment. It appears that this journal was to be turned in, so exactly what right to privacy exists here?

It's pretty clear to anyone with half a brain that you don't make death threats (particularly written ones!) on school campuses anymore without expecting consequences.

Expell 'em for gross stupidity if nothing else.
 
HomeLAN said:
Writing journals about it is a little far from saying "He needs killin'". As far as right to privacy goes, this was a grading assignment. It appears that this journal was to be turned in, so exactly what right to privacy exists here?
It's pretty clear to anyone with half a brain that you don't make death threats (particularly written ones!) on school campuses anymore without expecting consequences.

Expell 'em for gross stupidity if nothing else.
Click to expand...


That's where I side. If you know it's to be turned in, you forfeit the privacy argument and all related expectations.

You'd have to be dumber than a bag of hammers to do this post-Columbine.

I also agree that criminal charges may be too much, but there needs to be some lesson learned from this. If expulsion is the remaining alternative, so be it.
 
Children have no reason expectation of privacy from authority figures prominent in their lives.
 
I'd tend to agree, but,

1) you'd be surprised how many (non-parent) adults don't, and
2) One of these idiots was 18.

Why not just short-circuit the whole argument? You had to turn it in, there was no reasonable expectation to a right of privacy. We're done.
 
As for turning it in, it doesn't state so in the article? Only that it was classroom journals.Not sure what type of "journals" we're talking here. From the article:
they say their teacher told them those entries would never be read, so they should be considered private thoughts, not threats.
Click to expand...
Anyways, they're 17 and 18. Even if they meant nothing by it, their brains should have activated, and said "umm, maybe rephrase this shit".

Ooh, speaking of killing teachers.. My kid was on msn with a friend last night, debating what would be the best weapons of choice to take out the teachers at their school. But that's different. I mean, they just want to prevent harmful mind control causing them to do homework willingly. :lloyd:
 
I have housework to do, therefore I google instead.

This is from a different link:
Students from her classes said that collecting them wasn't unusual, but reading and evaluating them was. Several students said writing in the journals was the way DiSomma started almost every class. Her instructions were to write whatever comes to mind. When she collected them, she would give a point per page, no matter what the page said.
Click to expand...
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_766229.php
 
Also from the article:

Orange County Superior Court Judge Corey S. Cramin judge ruled that the journal entries could not be considered private. The court also upheld the teens’ suspension.

“Private thoughts lose their identity as such when they are reduced to writing as part of a class assignment and turned into the teacher for grading,” Cramin wrote in the ruling last month.
Click to expand...

That seemed clear to me that it was to be a graded (i.e. reviewed by a teacher) project.
 
Students from her classes said that collecting them wasn't unusual, but reading and evaluating them was. Several students said writing in the journals was the way DiSomma started almost every class. Her instructions were to write whatever comes to mind. When she collected them, she would give a point per page, no matter what the page said.
Click to expand...

Some education these kids are getting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top