AP: A half dozen 14- and 15-year-old girls at a rural Tennessee high school have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder after a list was discovered in a trash can that named people that they wanted to kill, which included “students and faculty members but also included Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and the Energizer Bunny.” “Principal Tommy Layne said that he initially considered it a joke,” but, y’know, we can’t play games with the life of a stuffed animatronic rabbit. I don’t know who’s dumber here, the principal, for calling the police, or the police, for not hanging up on him when he called.
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I am reminded of the Albemarle County School System’s similar myspace incident. Although in that incident I think the offending words were “gun” and “shoot things”. Plus a hand-full of fire crackers. It must have something to do with a) Southern Principals and b) Southern law enforcement.
As a teacher, I would’ve done the same thing as the principal. Yeah, sure, the Enegizer Bunny along with Cruise and Oprah were jokes. But we don’t know if the others were not. Plus the addition of Myspace quotes show a little more than meets the eye. The girls might have not gone through with it but would you take the risk if the kids you oversaw were threatened?
Huh, when I saw the headline, I thought it would involve a brilliant and brave American President.
As the school administrator, I think he did the right thing by forwarding this to the police. However, I want to see what exactly was on that Myspace account (especially since the police refuse to disclose the exact wording). Simply put, the group of kids didn’t have any weapons at their homes, there is no report about their social standing among their peers at the institution, and quite simply nothing more to go on here than a list in a trash can. I agree that the average kid does not typically do this, but I’d say that a lot more make these lists than those that actually kill anyone.
Ditto what Kevin said. We roll our eyes when we see these stories, but then when something does happen, everyone points to all the warning signs that the kids gave and asks why nobody stopped them. If I were a parent of a kid at that school, I’d be very grateful to the principal for stopping this before anyone got hurt. When kids start actually naming names of people they intend to kill, it’s time to take them seriously.
School administrators need to do everything they can to ensure that their students know that threats like that will be taken seriously and they will be punished to the fullest extent.
Sit them down individually with the School mental health counselor and a social worker. Make sure everything is at least okay with their home life. Arresting and charging them with a crime for a piece of paper is a bit over the top.
With attitudes like this I think now we know why Camblos thought he was doing something right.
Joe:
I disagree. From 1st year college through age 27, my group had a running list of people & things labeled “OMP” or “Off my planet” which included Alex Haig, Paul Volcker, Cap Weinberger, Robert Bork, Orville Redenbacher, BH 90210, Miami Vice, Menudo, Travis Tritt, and Celine Dion, as well as a couple of professors and a host of exes of both genders. I don’t think we ever wrote the list down, but we exchanged a ton of notes, puns, banter, and letters using our shorthand: One person would snort derisively, another would say “OMP.”
I don’t see why we have to be PC all the time. Sorry, but these girls should be allowed to express to their friends the people they deem “OMP” material. Confiscating their notebooks and reading BS into their Myspace posts isn’t protection of the populace, it’s suppression of their right to feel as do and express it to like-minded people. America has gone all thought-police and it’s not a Good Thing.
Oops, I should have said specifically that I disagree that the average kid doesn’t do this. IME, the average adolescent does do this — a lot — as they individuate from their family units to their peer groups, defining what’s cool and ok and what’s not for themselves.
I could not agree more. Those of us here in Charlottesville just witnessed this whole process unfold here, and we all knew from day 1 (well, day 2) that this was an overblown mess, a case of that bullshit in schools that we call “zero tolerance.” Talk with the kids, talk with their parents, get social workers involved if need be and then, if it looks like they had the means and the will, get the police involved.
The list was in the trash. They had quite literally disposed of any such plans, pretend or otherwise.
This is not about likes and dislikes. This is about threatening to kill someone. Now like I said before, it takes a comical turn with the Enegizer Bunny but that does not consider the real world ramifications of threatening another individual. Want to make a list of people you don’t like or hate? Fine. But it steps across a line when you say that you would like to KILL someone no matter how comical some of the people mentioned are considered.
This is not about being thought police. This is about ensuring a safe, classroom environment for students to work in.
We have prevention training for teen suicide. One of the items taught is to tell someone when a student says “I’m thinking of suicide.” We could brush it off and say “Oh they’re just joking.” We don’t. We tell a counselor and they get involved. Same parallel with the list. These students have taken the time to list who they would like to kill. It’s the same as expressing the thought out loud even if indirect. You take all threats seriously. Now as far as punishment…that’s up in the air. Definitely suspension with possible expulsion.
” I’m really glad that school was a dark and distant memory by the time presumption of a young introvert’s criminality became the norm. Please understand that if a person casually mentions that they’re going to pack heat after a round of R6, I think you should take a peek in the ol’ Jansport. But I’m almost sure I would have been jailed for my normal behavior, or at least “treated” for it, and I have a sense that this process would have thinned my already brittle grip on the rational.
I would be embarrassed to relate the whole of it, as it involved a bad perm, but after being fucked with relentlessly by two assholes over a substantial period of time, I made it clear that the endpoint of this activity was – for them, at any rate – subterranean.
Let’s come right to it: the only way I would actually kill a person is if they were playing the same game I was and happened to join the server. Even then, they would not die, even if I held the wish bright like a candle. In general terms, I’d try to deal enough “damage” to their network entity while dodging their own considerable firepower. I would try to use the map to my advantage.
I might peruse a faq.
But no, not murder especially. The urge to make a sound – some sound, of any kind – against the din of that place, whose overt and subliminal messages both are to disappear in the current, is almost overwhelming. Some of these sounds are nonsense. Some of them are out and out lies. I doubt those guys even remember it now. I only remember it because I’m ashamed of it. I don’t want to disappoint you next generation, but the damage one accrues in that cursed labyrinth does remain on your character sheet. ”
A quote from today’s penny arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com)
Kevin,
Do you believe that suspension or expulsion would make these children less likely to act out in a violent manner?
Secondly, do you believe that the threat of punishment would stop other children from making such lists, and if so, do you believe that this crack-down on list-making would stop children who might otherwise act out in a violent manner?
I actually believe that these things should be taken seriously, but I honestly see suspension or expulsion to be pretty much one of the worst responses I can think of. However, I’ll readily admit that I’m not in anything remotely resembling your shoes, so I would honestly like to hear your opinion on the matter.
The biggest reason I could think of to suspend or expel these students is if they were writing these lists and using them to terrorize the listed children. Death threats are in an entirely different realm from morbid fantasy (and morbid fantasy has a wide range in itself).
I don’t think that matters with a conspiracy. And from that news article it seems they were only charged with conspiracy, not attempt. As soon as two or more people conspire to commit a crime, and they really intend to do it, the crime of conspiracy has been committed. Now, whether they could be convicted of conspiracy is another matter.
If that list had only names like Oprah and Tom Cruise and the Energizer Bunny, then I’d agree that the principal looks dumb. But it also had names of students and teachers, so I don’t see how his actions or his statements are at all dumb.
Now comes word that it was just a list of names. There was nothing on the list that indicated that they wanted to do anything to them. (Read the original article and it becomes obvious, in retrospect — no claim was ever made otherwise.) So how did the concept of it being a threat come around?
Again, look back at the original article: one of the girls had a MySpace page that once used the word “kill”…but in a totally different context:
Since the moment I saw this article, I knew these girls were getting a raw deal. Now it’s more clear than ever.
How do we know that “kill” was used in a totally different context?
Just look at the coverage:
In all the coverage, it’s stated that there were two separate pieces of evidence: a list of names and a “posting” on MySpace “with the word ‘kill’.” Did the list of names have anything to do with the word “kill” being mentioned on MySpace? If so, nobody’s saying, which would be a pretty strange thing to do if the posting had listed those people and said “let’s kill them.”
that’s a good point. I suppose the administrators and law enforcement are just trying to cover their asses and not have yet another school shooting on their watch.