A straight-A high school senior in Illinois was arrested for an essay that he wrote. The assignment was to, "write whatever comes to your mind. Do not judge or censor what you are writing". The essay described a joke about a dream, filled with sex, drugs, booze, and violence. Sounds like 90 percent of primetime TV in America. He is being charged with disorderly conduct and faces prison time of 30 days.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, our nation has gone bonkers. A financial accounting professor at a Catholic college in Boston was fired for discussing scenarios and pointing at students and saying "pow" during the discussion.
Parents of Virginia Tech students are demanding the firing of Va. Tech's President and Campus Police Chief in light of the tragedy.
Wow! I am a sensitive person. I feel for every single person affected by what occurred in Blacksburg. Everyone is taking this way too far though. When free speech is muted, simply because something unspeakable happened, a new tragedy takes place. For the straight-A student. He took an open ended essay and wrote junk. The junk that he wrote was within the scope of the uncensored "anything" essay. He broke no laws. I will be interested to see what comes of it. I wish he would sue the police department for unlawful arrest.
For a teacher to be fired for demonstrating (not even in bad taste) reality is absurd. How many times did we see reenactments and diagrams and visual aides in the media. How can someone get so offended by a teacher when they have already seen worse for hours on end on the news? What is even more absurd is the demand to fire the university President and Police Chief. What parents wanted was an immediate lock down of the school. Hello, it is a large and open university with 40,000 students. You can NOT lock down a campus like that. I agree that protocol, whatever that is for a situation that involves a complete nut job with very VERY bad intentions, may not have been followed. Is blaming the President and Chief really going to vindicate what happened at Va. Tech? No.
Everyone mourns and searches for answers of how such an unthinkable thing could ever happen, in different ways. Instead of overreacting and denying people their basic freedoms, let's find a way to cope with the fact that this could happen anywhere and at anytime when someone is that ill-willed and murderous. To try to make an example out of someone just to make yourself feel better and to reassure your own false sense of security is absolutely the wrong thing to do.
Reaching out to one another and accepting people regardless of society's view or your own pretentiousness is a much better approach to prevention.
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4 comments:
It's my first comment!
here here. well said, jonathan. i am proud of this new angle and well thought out opinion!
It is sad to say, but when people are afraid, they willining give up some of their freedoms in the belief that it will make them safe. And when acts of violence occur, governments restrict civil liberties to protect their citizens. An example is the Patroit Act. After the terrorist acts in New York and Washington, Congress willingly approved the Patriot Act which we know violates our Constitution. And in the aftermath of the murders at Virgina Tech, schools are hypersensitive to warning signs of troubled students who may be future mass murders. It doesn't make it correct but people are nervous. Those in the position of protecting students are more aware than ever that protecting students from someone who wants to shoot up a classroom is almost impossible. They do what they think is right. There is probably no malice here on the part of the school; the action was probably taken because of the timing of the essay as well as the violent content. It's a sad sign of the times.
happy birthday jon.
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