School is almost over, and with it ending I have time to blog. Not that this means I'll increase my posting rate...rather all my time will be devoted to AIM and Facebook. Sorry, but that's the way it goes. As long as I'm on the personal side of things, I'd like to talk about a feature I heard on Talk of the Nation today. Apparently a high school kid in Illinois was arrested for writing allegedly violent and threatening prose. He was taken into custody about a week after the Virginia Tech tragedy, likely by overanxious personnel (teachers, principals, police) who didn't want a massacre on their hands.
And now the facts: The writer of this piece of prose? A senior on the wrestling team with a 4.2 GPA. Not exactly your typical school shooter. And why did he write this piece, anyway? Well, it turns out that it was a school assignment - an exercise in stream of consciousness writing. Students were meant to write whatever came into their heads, no censorship involved. One would think that the students wouldn't be penalized for thoughts that weren't exactly PC, right? Well apparently not.
To be put in jail for a crime you haven't committed yet, simply for writing about the idea of the crime, and not even putting yourself in the role of the criminal, is somewhat ridiculous. Actually, I take that back. It's completely ridiculous. No way can this be justified, especially not by claiming that the student represents a threat because he followed the guidelines set down by his teacher. This is just another example of our overanxious society exercising its rights to censorship and taking people prisoner without just cause. Isn't this a wonderful country?
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