Brickbat: Picture This

Courtesy of brian.ch / photo on flickr

Officials at Arizona's Poston Butte High School suspended Daniel McClaine Jr. after they found he had an AK-47 at school. OK, it wasn't a real AK-47, just an image of one that was part of the background on his school-issued computer. Officials say school policy bars students from sending or displaying offensive photographs or harrassing or threatening images.

Comments

[Pro Libertate]

Should I turn myself in for drawing bombers and fighters when I was a kid?

[Lost_In_Translation]

I actually made paper airplane bombers in class. I should have been expelled. Those pencil eraser bombs were obviously a threat to school security.

[WTF]

Hell, when I was a kid in grade school, we had an art class, and my projects were generally drawing/painting war scenes with tanks blowing up, soldiers getting shot, airplanes strafing and bombing, etc. If a normal little boy did that today he'd likely be expelled and put under psychiatric care. We are truly doomed as a society.

[RBS]

Me too. Apparently my wife has become infected with the new mom crazy virus though, she didn't see a problem with the school suspending the kid for "being a moron."

[Lost_In_Translation]

She deserves a sig Heil for that. Make sure to click your heels.

[RBS]

She also blamed the parent for letting him put the picture on the computer. If it was my son and I saw it I would probably (knowing what the school would likely do if they saw it) explain the likely consequences and let him decide for himself.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Oh, look, a military-style assault weapon depicted on the Iwo Jima Memorial.

If it were my kid, I'd encourage her to keep the picture of the AK-47 and tell her that there would be a shitstorm the likes of which that school has never seen if they make a peep about it.

[entropy]

Ditto.

Summon the lawyers!

[Fist of Etiquette]

What's great is, the image is defined as threatening by the offended. So virtually anything could violate the policy, and you wouldn't know until after offense has been taken. It's foolproof!

[Suki]

This.
And Happy Valentine's Day reason!

[Auric Demonocles]

I feel threatened by this Valentine's Day greeting.

[WTF]

Don't you know leftists have a right to not be offended? It's right there in teh constitooshunz!

[Whiterun Guard]

It's common sense. The constitution, that foul, racist, and sexist codex of evil, has nothing to do with it.

[Atanarjuat]

Some of my friends were victims of similar hyperventilating in high school (a little over 10 years ago). We were assigned to do a video, and one of the guys wore a rubber Bill Clinton mask. The soft mask had developed a fold in the chin during storage, and our teacher became incensed and told the principle that the kids had intentionally made it appear as if Bill Clinton had a vagina on the side of his chin (I'm not making this up). Not sure what her thought process was, since they didn't mention vaginas during the video skit and only used the mask to represent an old man. The principal had enough rare sense to drop the whole thing.

[invisible furry hand]

I'd like to think that teacher is now out of the school system, perhaps standing on a street corner randomly pointing at things and shouting "that's a vagina!" to no-one in particular.

[Whiterun Guard]

That'd be nice, but unfortunately she's now in charge of Conduct, Discipline and Student Equality for the entire greater Seattle school district.

[Groovus Maximus]

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts she also writes for or contributes to Feminfisting, Jezehell, and other Aggrieved Minority publications.

[Whiterun Guard]

Haaay...one of those is a real site I subscribe to.

To which I subscribe. Who talks like that?!?!

[Groovus Maximus]

I do.-)))

[Night Elf Mohawk]

That is something up with which I will not put.

[Whiterun Guard]

When I was in school it was SOP to lie about ANYTHING a teacher asked you about (except like answering class-related questions, and even then, if you could get a laugh, you did it). Do kids just not lie now? My first instinct when questioned about a pic on the computer would be "someone else put it on there and I don't know how to get it off."

I mean presumeably there's still some kind of investigation period, because that's where teachers and administrators get their rocks off (even more than the punishment phase, IMHO). And you just go all stone face and "Don't know where it came from." "I didn't do it." "Must have been someone else." "I don't know who."

[Being Waterboarded]

I had an Autocad class in high school (back in the mid 90s) that consisted of 5 students and 5 DOS PCs. The teacher for the class had a simultaneous class he was teaching down the hall, so was never in the computer lab (it was essentially self-taught). One of the students loaded several photos of nude women on each of the PCs under several layers of hidden folders, then created a hidden batch file that would locate the photos and load them up. Nobody would have found them, but one time the (male) teacher walked in the room when a student had them on his screen. In the end, the students involved did not even get detention, as I recall.

My high school (rural area) was pretty lax at that time. I brought a double-barrel shotgun to school one time and kept it in my locker (I was going to use it for an in-class skit). Never told anyone I was doing it. Teachers saw it, but never said anything to me.

We also had an end of year class party for a mechanical drawing class that involved making beer brats in the school parking lot.

Good times... I'm sure even my rural high school is a prison now. Frown.

[db]

If I had a nickel for every time someone has done something or shown something to me to offend me, I'd buy a fucking prison, populate it with the offenders and torture them mercilessly with no end until they apologized and promised never to do it again.

How is that different from what is going on with these terminally offended shitbags?

[Whiterun Guard]

They actually have a bunch of nickels.

[Professional Target]

If I were the parents of that kid, I'd tell everyone involved I'm offended by their stupidity and how do I get you removed from the school payroll? Look into every the media, every governmental channel, every pressure group in your area. It's amazing how fast school people run for cover when you go on the offensive over their crap. And entertaining too.

[Jerryskids]

Can kids wear tan pants to school? Because tan is the color of sand, sand makes me think of a desert, deserts have camels, camel sounds like camouflage, camouflage is worn by soldiers, soldiers carry guns. Therefore, wearing tan pants to school is equivalent to bringing a gun into the classroom.

[wareagle]

ban the khaki. It's the only way. And cargo pants. Because they have big pockets and you can hide stuff.

[Virginian]

Khaki pants are military assault fabrics. Thousands of Sudanese, Zulus, and other oppressed people were killed by white men in khaki pants.

[Auric Demonocles]

No one needs the capacity to store 10 pads of paper in their pant pockets.

[Romulus Augustus]

Do they razor out pictures in their history books of, say, the Boston Massacre, Gen. Lee and Grant, D-Day landings, etc?

[$park?]

Why would they, those picture show how guns have been historically used for evil.

[Romulus Augustus]

You are probably right. I can just hear the prog teacher saying about the Boston Massacre, "And that's what should be done to modern day teabaggers too!"

[ChrisO]

You're assuming current history books actually contain any material about those things. I think that's all been PC-ed out.

[oncogenesis]

All of the "officials" at Poston Butte High School should be required to read this book before the start of every school year: Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence