[iWrite]

Read here.

This story sends a chill down my spine because it's the precursor to censorship in this country: The government dictating what can and cannot be said or written about -- or fantasized about.

Seriously, read the link and give your opinion about it. After you read it, tell us what you think, but remember that ARTISTIC FREEDOM means varying degrees of imagination and that imagination does not necessarily mean enactment.

What's next? The government deciding which screenwriters to arrest because a movie plot revolving around an assassin killing the president is deemed "a credible threat?"

---> ALL THE WAY.

I hope this girl's father brings this all the way to the Supreme Court.

[RooneyX]

She's a lovely girl and has imagination and guts.

Meanwhile this guy's singing MUST be banned:

http://www.cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/....wbtv.med.html

[ZackS]

Minors do not have all those rights that adults do. In addition, all of those rights do not apply in school. As my 5th grade always said: "This classroom is not a democracy and it's great to be the king." However, expulsion for writing something in her journal seems a bit... odd.

[ZackS]

Originally posted by RooneyX:
She's a lovely girl and has imagination and guts.

Meanwhile this guy's singing MUST be banned:

http://www.cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/....wbtv.med.html

OH GOD MAKE IT STOP!!! MAKE IS TOP FOR THE LOVE OF... oh, you can just close the window. Sweet.

[RooneyX]

Originally posted by ZackS:
OH GOD MAKE IT STOP!!! MAKE IS TOP FOR THE LOVE OF... oh, you can just close the window. Sweet.

Use Expose and make it go back and forth.

[mchladek]

This goes to show what Bill Mahr often said: "No tolerance means no thought." Quite sad indeed.

But what is really odd about the article is this:

Rachel Boim, 14, who lived in the Denver area at the time of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, that left 15 dead

What does that have anything to do with her story? What? She was like 9 when that happened? Who cares? I can see it now, ten years from now: "John Doe, 15, who lived in NYC at the time of 9/11 that shattered the nation took a gun to school ..."

[neigh-neigh-woo]

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." -einstein

does it count as a threat, its fiction, weird..

[starman]

This is new?

When I was in college 15 years ago we put together a little magazine. It had articles, humor, etc. One was a spoof on word problems that read:

"A Trenton State professor is crossing the street. If he gets hit by a bus going 40 miles/hour, how many donuts did he eat that morning?"

Do you know how much sh*t I got for writing that?

Mike

[PJW]

Originally posted by ZackS:
Minors do not have all those rights that adults do. In addition, all of those rights do not apply in school. As my 5th grade always said: "This classroom is not a democracy and it's great to be the king." However, expulsion for writing something in her journal seems a bit... odd.

I've always wondered if this is the reason why so many young people just don't care about participating in our democracy. If we're raising students to become citizens of a democracy, yet they spend their most formative and impressionable years in an environment that's about as democratic as a Soviet gulag, how can they be expected to understand what's required of them as citizens of a participatory government?

Or are we just teaching kids to learn the skills they need to get a job and make money? Seems like we could be doing more as a society to better ourselves through our children than to groom them to become the next generation of Wall Street stock brokers.

[macarita]

this must be why i come here...where else can you find bill mahr and einstein quoted in the same thread? and
starman:
"A Trenton State professor is crossing the street. If he gets hit by a bus going 40 miles/hour, how many donuts did he eat that morning?"

Do you know how much sh*t I got for writing that?"

I loved that..
and PJW.....
I've thought the exact same thing...all we are doing by censorship like this is squelching all that is worth living for...freedoms to imagine, to dream and to create new...

[MindFad]

That's pretty lame.

[scottiB]

Originally posted by iWrite:
Read here.

This story sends a chill down my spine because it's the precursor to censorship in this country: The government dictating what can and cannot be said or written about -- or fantasized about.

Easy there: she's not being censored; she's free to hire a literary agent and seek to publish her journal/story if she wishes. In fact, there are many authors that would love to be a subject of a CNN-online article. The government is not dictating anything. She's not being reprogrammed. She was penalized because of post-Columbine stress disorder that's pervasive to every school system across America. Was her suspension too extreme? Perhaps, but that hinges on the school system's own zero-tolerance policy (a tad ironic that an art teacher blew the whistle--I guess that Mapplethorpe isn't in her appreciation classes).

This piece wasn't for a school assignment or the school paper--it was in her journal--a recording device that I consider to be quite personal. Apparently, not personal to her since she showed it to a friend in school under the eye of a teacher. If she shared the story outside of school, this incident never occurs.

[The Jackalope]

More proof that public schools are shyte.

[iWrite]

This is what her father said -- she obviously comes from an intelligent and thinking family and they're raised and intelligent and THINKING young woman:

DAVID BOIM:

The school administrators live in a what-if world. So I can understand them being concerned and calling us in and having a discussion. But what -- everything that transpired beyond that is almost surreal. The fact that her teacher took the book because it might have been a distraction in class, that's great. The fact that the journal was not returned and he actually read the journal -- that's very, very disturbing to me. And she was expelled for inappropriate writings.

What is appropriate writing? What is not appropriate writing? What is an appropriate thought? What is not an appropriate thought? Where does that erosion of civil liberties and our rights as American citizens -- where does that begin and where does that end? That -- those are very troubling issues. And I made it very clear to them from the very beginning that those were my concerns.

You can read the entire interview here.

As far as her coming from Columbine, I think that was mentioned because she has a lot on her mind to think about, express, write about, that's all.

This is a VERY big deal -- where DOES government interference STOP?

Let me tell you all a little story that happened right here with us. It resulted in a big media circus.

My son, aged 10 at the time, was in the cafeteria eating lunch. The utensil the children are "allowed" to eat with is called a "spork" and it is a plastic spoon with tines it -- the same "utensil" that prisoners in prison eat with, I understand.

Well, they were given Jello pudding cups, sealed pudding cups, as a dessert with lunch that day. My son, along with some other kids, put the pudding cup and the spork in his backpack to eat later on -- at home.

On the way home, on the bus, he pulled out his textbook to read his homework assignment and the spork fell out. He didn't notice it. Another little girl did, though, and she took it up to the bus driver and gave it to her and told her that our son had brought it on the bus.

I swear to God, the bus driver turned the bus AROUND, took everyone back to the school, hauled our son off of the bus...and called the school police officer...and told this officer that our son "had brought a dangerous item on the bus" and she wanted him written up and he was no longer allowed to ride the school bus.

!!!

I received a phone call first from the police officer, then my son -- who was crying after being hauled away by the police officer, then the school district who "agreed that the item in question (the spork) was indeed a dangerous item and should not have been allowed in his possession."

Now, remember, this is a "dangerous item" that the school district GIVES the kids to use!

I pointed this out to the school district and it turned into a big deal. They agreed to let him back on the bus -- but would not remove the incident from his school record.

I called an attorney and then, because my job is/was (I'm on leave) in the media, I called the television station. They came out and it turned into a big deal. Eventually the school district backed down and removed (supposedly) the incident from his school record, but I know firsthand how ridiculous the "zero tolerance" policy can be bastardized.

I think that is why, in particular, I am incensed by this girl's experience. I'm glad it's attracted national media attention -- they're all lumpheads.

On TOP of the fact that the teacher STOLE her personal journal and READ it.

He/she should be fired for that, IMO.

Just my perspective.

[Shaddim]

No reason for her to be expelled, but she probably needs to see a shrink or counselor. There's issues there needing to be addressed.

When I was 15 I wrote a graphic story about a trio of kids brutally murdering a popular guy who attended their school, skinning him, and then taking turns wearing his skin so that they could get a feel for what it was like to be him (I wrote this before the movie S.o.t.Lambs came out). Yeah, very twisted stuff. I submitted the story as an English assignment on creative writing. My teacher immediately called my parents in for a meeting, the result of which was that I had to see a psychologist for a year. Turns out, that was the best thing for me. I had some serious issues regarding rage and depression brought on from teasing and hazing (because I had a serious acne problem for many years).

Fact is, we don't know the specifics of this girl's situation. Maybe she's had disciplinary problems in the past, or maybe this isn't the first time she's made these types of statements. At any rate, this is most likely a cry for help.

[Pedro the Migo]

Originally posted by MacNStein:
No reason for her to be expelled, but she probably needs to see a shrink or counselor. There's issues there needing to be addressed.

When I was 15 I wrote a graphic story about a trio of kids brutally murdering a popular guy who attended their school, skinning him, and then taking turns wearing his skin so that they could get a feel for what it was like to be him (I wrote this before the movie S.o.t.Lambs came out). Yeah, very twisted stuff. I submitted the story as an English assignment on creative writing. My teacher immediately called my parents in for a meeting, the result of which was that I had to see a psychologist for a year. Turns out, that was the best thing for me. I had some serious issues regarding rage and depression brought on from teasing and hazing (because I had a serious acne problem for many years).

Fact is, we don't know the specifics of this girl's situation. Maybe she's had disciplinary problems in the past, or maybe this isn't the first time she's made these types of statements. At any rate, this is most likely a cry for help.

Oh please. Just because you had issues, doesn't mean that anyone who has violent or otherwise "disturbing" thoughts also has issues.

Your making a whole hell of a lot of assumptions about this girl, especially for someone who's claiming that we're lacking information to base assumptions on.

[Mrs_Vod[k]a]

I once wrote a story in school about a gun that would shoot out bananas which people in the jungle would use to defend themselves from monkeys without killing them. To my surprise, my teacher got very upset about the gun aspect of the story. The moral of the story: monkey hate gun

End.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by ZackS:
Minors do not have all those rights that adults do. In addition, all of those rights do not apply in school. As my 5th grade always said: "This classroom is not a democracy and it's great to be the king." However, expulsion for writing something in her journal seems a bit... odd.

Exactly. This isn't the injustice people are thinking it is.

[brachiator]

Originally posted by scottiB:
Easy there: she's not being censored; she's free to hire a literary agent and seek to publish her journal/story if she wishes.

I think you're using too strict a definition of censorship.

Yes, she is not completely muzzled. But a government agency (public school, right?) has penalized her for the content of her artistic/personal/political expression.

She's no Aung San Suu Kyi, I'll agree, but it's at least low-level censorship, in my book.

Of course, the school district would probably spin it not as penalization of her expression, but rather as removal from school temporarily of someone who had raised the suspicion of being violent. Still, the particulars of the "zero-tolerance" policy that can be gleaned from the article do imply that it was her speech to which the school took offense.

Too bad the California state gov't doesn't have a "zero-tolerance" policy on violent fantasies. Our Governor-elect Schwarzengroper would have been in the clink long, long ago!

[catsank]

"It was a story about a girl who falls asleep in class, dreams she kills her math teacher, then wakes up and nothing happens," she said.

Rachel's english teacher is
the one who should be shot.

[UR-20]

The day our government dreams of.

The school district.

[Zimphire]

What about someone writing about their desire to commit hate crimes?

Like against minorities or people not of the same color? Or different sexual preference?

Would you consider them being removed wrong?

[faragbre967]

Originally posted by PJW:
I've always wondered if this is the reason why so many young people just don't care about participating in our democracy. If we're raising students to become citizens of a democracy, yet they spend their most formative and impressionable years in an environment that's about as democratic as a Soviet gulag, how can they be expected to understand what's required of them as citizens of a participatory government?

Or are we just teaching kids to learn the skills they need to get a job and make money? Seems like we could be doing more as a society to better ourselves through our children than to groom them to become the next generation of Wall Street stock brokers.

I agree, but at the same time, how would you go about making school more democratic? There would always be kids like me who would vote to do the least or not do anything. And if you say that's not an option, then that's not a democracy.

[Myrkridia]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
What about someone writing about their desire to commit hate crimes?

Like against minorities or people not of the same color? Or different sexual preference?

Would you consider them being removed wrong?

1st amendment protects them. It's their right to express their opinion, just as it's your right to express your love for your God and savior.

[Beewee]

Ya this country isn't about democracy anymore. Its all about propaganda and fear. If it gets any worse I'm going to Canada with all the other refuges.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by Myrkridia:
1st amendment protects them. It's their right to express their opinion, just as it's your right to express your love for your God and savior.

Actually a parent has a right to tell his kid to shut up whenever he or she wants to.

These rights are for 18+

[iWrite]

Not a bad idea. Especially since they have health care coverage for everyone there. Move to Vancouver. AWESOME place to live.

[Pedro the Migo]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Actually a parent has a right to tell his kid to shut up whenever he or she wants to.

These rights are for 18+

Where in the constitution does it say that the rights guaranteed are only guaranteed to adults?

And just because someone isn't guaranteed a right, doesn't mean that there's no injustice when they are deprived of it. It just means there's no legal problem.

[Zimphire]

Again no one is stopping this gal from saying anything.

[Myrkridia]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Actually a parent has a right to tell his kid to shut up whenever he or she wants to.


These rights are for 18+

Then what was the point of mentioning someone spreading their desire to kill minorities and such through their writings?

[Pedro the Migo]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Again no one is stopping this gal from saying anything.

They are saying that if she says certain kinds of things she will be punished. That is the same thing.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by Pedro the Migo:
They are saying that if she says certain kinds of things she will be punished. That is the same thing.

Ask Cash what happens when you talk about killing Gore.

Death threats or such of the like have always been taken seriously.

You know when I went to HS, if you cussed in class you were sent to the office.

OMG!!

[Pedro the Migo]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Ask Cash what happens when you talk about killing Gore.

Death threats or such of the like have always been taken seriously.

You know when I went to HS, if you cussed in class you were sent to the office.

OMG!!

This was not a death threat. People have written stories about assassination attempts on the president, both successful and unsuccessful, should they be punished for creatively expressing themselves just because the authorities don't like the scenario that they imagined?

Yes, people are often subjected to punishment for their words, though the intention usually seems to be punishment for their thoughts. I think this is wrong. [edit]Although I think that students who are intentionally disruptive of class should be removed from the class. By being in the class they implicitly agreed to respect the teacher and their fellow students and if they are disruptive they have broken this agreement. They should have just not gone to class since they obviously weren't going to get anything valuable from it.[/edit]

[keekeeree]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
What about someone writing about their desire to commit hate crimes?

Like against minorities or people not of the same color? Or different sexual preference?

Would you consider them being removed wrong?

Please...retire this broken record already...please?

[keekeeree]

Originally posted by ZackS:
OH GOD MAKE IT STOP!!! MAKE IS TOP FOR THE LOVE OF... oh, you can just close the window. Sweet.

Holy bejeezus...I felt like a deer in the headlights...I...just...couldn't...turn...away.... AAAAAHHHH!!!!

"As the land beneath her sings"...well...except for Ashcroft!

[Link]

To me it doesn't sound like freedom of art, nor freedom of speech, but common sense that comes into play here.

You can, and WILL gain bad attention, perhaps from legal authorities if you describe an assination, ESPECIALLY if you get REALLY into detail. Constitutional or not that's just human instinct.

[iWrite]

link:

Aren't you forgetting something?

Like the fact that the teacher took away a PERSONAL piece of property and USED it by reading it? I'd call that theft, actually. If I had a iBook (I'm using it right now) and brought it to school and the teacher took it away and then opened it and READ my data on it -- used the computer in other words -- and then admitted to using the computer, I would say that the teacher had STOLEN it and USED it. Whether reading the data on a computer (files, stories, data, etc.,) or reading a journal makes no difference. It was a personal effect and should not have been used or read.

That is aside from the entire issue of privacy.

That teacher should have immediately sent the journal to the office where it could have been held for safekeeping and returned to the girl's parents or the girl later, PERIOD.

The fact that the teacher read her personal journal is disgusting. Seriously.

That is aside from the content of what was written.

In our school district a little boy, 8 years old, sneaked into a classroom while everyone was at lunch and read the teacher's email at her computer. He was discovered and guess what? The prosecuted him for FELONY ROBBERY! It's another case of extremism, but my point is that reading someone's private material, non-school related matter, is the same as theft in my opinion.

It's a very good thing that this girl isn't my daughter because I'd be suing the teacher along with the school district -- it's theft.

Anyway, brachiator said:

Too bad the California state gov't doesn't have a "zero-tolerance" policy on violent fantasies. Our Governor-elect Schwarzengroper would have been in the clink long, long ago!

brachiator.

[Shaddim]

Originally posted by Pedro the Migo:
Oh please. Just because you had issues, doesn't mean that anyone who has violent or otherwise "disturbing" thoughts also has issues.

Your making a whole hell of a lot of assumptions about this girl, especially for someone who's claiming that we're lacking information to base assumptions on.

Actually, that's exactly what I'm saying, she has issues.

You're making a lot of assumptions too. That's what this forum is mostly about; assumptions, opinions, and perceptions. Otherwise we wouldn't have jacksh*t to talk about. Maybe the way she "killed" said teacher was quite graphic or disturbing. Mass murderers don't just wake up one morning and think, "gee, I think I'll go waste some people today". They leave signs, like this one. I'm not saying she's a killer, just that there may be something there. A counselor or phsychologist might do her some good.

[jckalen]

When I was in High School (85 & earlier), if you brought something to class and it was a distraction to you and other students, it would most certainly be taken away. The fact that it is a journal as opposed to a radio, yo yo, lap top, box cutter, sling shot, frog, drugs, etc - it's all immaterial. It was a distraction and it was taken away.
Much of what those Columbine idiots did had been alluded to in their personal writings. A school shooting was actually thwarted in upstate NY whan someone read a kid's journal. He had not only written about bringing pipe bombs to school, he had made some to bring in. If someone had not busted him by reading his journal, he could very well have pulled it off. This was a rural town so no extra security or metal detectors would have slowed him down.
While I agree that the expulsion was extreme, keep in mind that this was the decision of a local school. They were not necessarily reading their decision from some new federal homeland security handbook. It's not like John Ashcroft is going to have her shipped to Cuba.
The fact that her father is going to make a big deal out of this bothers me more. He will probably try to say it's an expression of her oppressed feelings stemming from saying "under God" during the pledge.
Show me an innocent child who is oppressed in school and I will show you a 'blameless' parent who is a media whore.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by jckalen:
Show me an innocent child who is oppressed in school and I will show you a 'blameless' parent who is a media whore.

[neigh-neigh-woo]

The teachers are scared.

What's next? The government deciding which screenwriters to arrest because a movie plot revolving around an assassin killing the president is deemed "a credible threat?"

The news isn't reporting everything that is happening over the world. Just what is convenient for you to hear.
You try writing a script that goes against the norm, and see where it goes - nowhere i bet.
You have artistic freedon as long as it fits in with your society and general propaganda.

[Pedro the Migo]

Originally posted by MacNStein:
Actually, that's exactly what I'm saying, she has issues.

You're making a lot of assumptions too. That's what this forum is mostly about; assumptions, opinions, and perceptions. Otherwise we wouldn't have jacksh*t to talk about. Maybe the way she "killed" said teacher was quite graphic or disturbing. Mass murderers don't just wake up one morning and think, "gee, I think I'll go waste some people today". They leave signs, like this one. I'm not saying she's a killer, just that there may be something there. A counselor or phsychologist might do her some good.

I've thought things similar to what both she and you wrote before. I've never written them down, but I've thought about such scenarios. My thinking about them had nothing to do with any desire to actually make those scenarios reality, and I never broke the rules in any serious way. Well-adjusted, non-dangerous people can have these thoughts too. I enjoy reading and watching bloody, violent works of both fiction and non-fiction. As a result, my imagination often tends towards the bloody and violent. I'm also trained in a particularly violent and effective/deadly martial art. Yet I've never hurt anyone and I don't intend to for any reason other than defense.

Maybe her case is more like yours, maybe it is more like mine, maybe it's completely different from both of us. In my opinion, it is due to reactions such as yours and those of the school board that drives kids to do the horrible things that we've seen them do. The more alienated they are and feel, the more people treat them as though there's something wrong with them. It just progresses like that, builds up, until eventually someone snaps. Yes, people are still responsible for their own actions, but the attitude that people take towards these cases is such that, in my opinion, their attempts to help do at least as much harm as good.

Oh, and I felt oppressed all the way through school. I hated high school and was incredibly glad when it was over. The hypocrisy, contradiction, and ignorance of school administrators is amazing. The fact that kids have no options and are forced to just deal with this doesn't help matters. People don't want kids to be little people, they want them to be their conception of innocent youth and they always treat them as such. This is why kids grow to resent the "system" and the people in it. But just because someone hates school or even hates the people at school, doesn't mean they're in need of a psychologist, and it doesn't mean that they're dangerous (doesn't mean they aren't, either).