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Washington School Bans Halo 2 Tournament
Pluvius writes "A couple of high-school students in the Washington city of Puyallup wanted to raise money for the tsunami disaster in South Asia, and figured that the best way to do so was to hold a tournament using Bungie's hit XBox title Halo 2. Their school district disagreed, citing an anti-violence policy. Even though all of the parents of the children who would've taken part in the tournament signed waivers acknowledging the game's violence, Puyallup School District felt that due to school shootings across the country, 'anything we do that even looks like we're endorsing violence is not appropriate.'"
Is there a mod for this that changes the weapons systems to Nerf guns?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Yes, because each and every person out there would make the obvious cognitive leap that raising charity money via tournaments of a futuristic game based on fragging aliens equates to condoning kids bringing guns to school and shooting their classmates, right? /sarcasm
This is asinine. Does the school have a football team? A wrestling team? Or do those not count as violent?
Are they really expecting the kids to go home, make a needle gun, and bring it in to school? All the Halo games teach is that you should kill aliens. It says nothing about school teachers or other students.
Here's a spoon, America. Let's dig our heads out of our asses.
What a non-story (not slashdot but the article). The students want it, the parents signed off on it. So what if the school doesn't want it? Then don't involve the school. I'm sure there's plenty of other locations where one could hold the tournament. Maybe a local community center?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The school *did* have a football team, but they deemed it to violent and closed it down. They now play a form of "peaceball" where opponents hand each other presents, then gently insist the other team is better than their own, and has won.
School's policy, school's decision.
Just have the fundraiser outside of school property.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Keep going down.
Oh and don't you dare bring up the other hot spots where genocide and regular slaughter are going on. That's just man against man, whereas the Tsunami represents God against man, and we're going to KICK gOD'S ASS!!!111 WTF!!!!11Yeah, right.
Booooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiinggggg ggggg!
No seriously, how is this news? This happens all the time, like when my school tried to fundraise for our robotics team. That certainly didn't make slashdot.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
If they refuse to endorse violence in any way, shape, or form; then bye bye Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy (?), Nursery Rhymes; etc, as well as almost all forms of organised sport; modern art, some forms of modern music, etc; etc.
It's a video game. Just as Romeo and Juliet is a book. Where one has you not-so-elegantly killing your opponents; the other has a very elegant description of someone killing his opponents. Where you conspire with your friends to best your enemies in Halo; the two houses "teams" conspire to best each other in Romeo and Juliet.
Humanity is violent; its' roots are violence, and if you cannot control your own desire for violence then *you* probably *will* do something stupid at some point in your life- which has nothing to do whatsoever with Halo 2; Half-life 2; Doom 3.....
My UID is prime. Is yours?
...have stuck with MonkeyBall
The school can't force them to not do this. It sounds more like they weren't willing to host the event. The kids can do their Halo 2 tournament elsewhere if they like, can't they?
I can't really blame them. All it would take is some bleeding-heart political activist and suddenly it would look like the school is endorsing violent activities. The school is protecting themselves from possible litigation and some possible embarassment. As much as it sucks, it's the safer decision they've taken.
I know this isn't going to be the most popular opinion, but I sort of feel sorry for the school district here. I mean, imagine if they did allow this and a parent complained, and you know one would. In a society that values censorship over responsibility, these people just did what they needed to to keep their jobs. As asinine as it seems, the district people were taking the safest route for all involved, politically. One more thing- imagine that a week later some nutball came to school and started shooting. You just know Halo 2 would have been blamed, whether the stupid kid went to the touroment or not. I guess if something were to happen, it's better that it not easily be tied to a form of media that a lot of people are trying very hard to censor.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Could it be...new sig!
Seriously, I'm not shocked that Puyallup would cancel such a thing. Schools and guns just don't go together, no matter how innocent the intention. The act of utter insanity and stupidity in Columbine only reinforced that.
Still, I agree here. The Red Cross needs every dollar it can find, and something popular like Halo 2--complete with violence release form--would have done that. Governments tend to pledge aircraft-carrier loads of money and not give it when it's needed.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
IIRC, it's their legal position that student organizations all have an equal right to school facilities (yup even the Boy Scouts - just no 'special rights').
You may want to contact them via their students' rights web site at ACLU student rights
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
I had to read the Red Badge of Courage in 9th grade. However, I didn't feel the need to shoot southerners immediatly after finishing the book.
-Dipster
Halo 2 has an ESRB rating of M (17+). Most of the kids in highschool do not fit into that category. If they wanted to have a Mario Party tournament then I would understand people being upset over it being canceled but we have to face facts. Halo 2 is not for kids.
Instead of the school admin worrying that this might lead to school shootings, maybe they should examine the other side of the spectrum. Perhaps, just perhaps, letting these teens take out some frustrations on some virtual characters in some game will help alleviate some stress.
I know I always feel better when I riddle some poor nameless sod with a few hundred rounds from my MG3 in Ghost Recon...
And they said zombies weren't real!
$500 will help a lot more than sitting around whining on slashdot about something you don't agree with. What are you doing to help?
Go help. Go volunteer, go write a check, go do something with your life. Putting down people who are trying to help, helps nobody.
It may be "man against god" but unlike many other genocides going on in the world, this one is not due to politics or religion. There is no bad guy and no good guy.
At my school, we have a club that meets every wednesday to play Unreal Tournament on school computers. The administration allows it, and we aren't even as noble as these guys who were working for tsunami releif.
What some people do in the name of "zero tolerence"...
This sig is false.
So I guess this school was -against- the war in Iraq ? As opposed to all the other state-institutes which liked to brainwash people into believing it was a rightous war?
Look, think about it from the school's perspective. Lawyers will try to find even the most obscure link between a shooting and the video games the shooter may have played. If the school *did* allow this tournament to happen, you just know that if there was a shooting five years down the line that the school district would be the first in line to be sued.
Don't blame the school, blame the sue-happy culture and the negative stigma of videogames for forcing their hand.
Even if they don't raise any money, this is sure to reduce the teen pregnancy rate at the school.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It had little effect on productivity, grades didn't change, and we were using otherwise unnocupied resources. And I don't need to tell you the effect it had on morale...
Few months later, in the next semester, we had some county people in the school. One of them was checking email in the lab. Someone else walked in and booted up UT.
Not only did we recieve a ridiculous lecture (understand, we are 15 mins from Columbine, maybe 18mos later) but there were suspensions, the lab tech was reprimanded (later left the system - now makes twice the $$ dev'ing software!) And we made the district newsletter.
Schools over-react to everything, because by default, the only people in district management are the ones who think there is something intrensically wrong with the way the system is run - they do not understand logic - They comprehend only liability.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Students at a school go on a shooting spree when officials told them that they couldn't play Halo 2 for a good cause.
Idiots
but not for tsunami relief. My English 10 class ended up bringing in two X-Boxes, 8 controllers and 2 copies of Halo 2. I brought in a crossover cable and we used school projectors. Teacher sanctioned it and maybe five teachers knew about the whole thing. We had a blast, and nobody was the wiser that would have caused us to shut down.
I completely understand and agree with teh schools stance. Should anything have happened after the event, months or even years, you could bet that some parents group somewhere would have held the school liable for it.
I also think that the students should be commended for wanting to do something to aid the victims of this disaster. It proves that their generation isn't as disenfranchised as we are lead to believe.
Good job gamers!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I agree that it's stupid that they have to turn this kind of thing down. But I would do the same thing given today's society. If someone playing the games shot someone later, you know the district could get sued because they "promoted violence" and probably win. Not because it's true, but because we live in a "blame others first" society. It wouldn't be worth it to me to take the risk. Stupid society.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
This is only one small part of a much bigger problem.
American students are not taught how to distinguish fantasy from reality.
This has been going on for at least one generation, maybe more, depending on what criteria you use.
This is why Americans are not allowed to see real phone numbers in fictional movies. If they do, people call the numbers trying to reach the fictional characters. (A film that had a story about God helping people had a real number in it and the people who happened to have that number were swamped by people trying to contact God.)
Some people say our last election was an example of people who cannot tell fantasy from reality.
Some of the people who want to protect us from real violence seem to believe that fantasy violence either causes it or encourages real violence when the statistics show no such correleation. Just because they cannot tell the difference does not mean that others do not.
I can give other examples...
I doubt that this problem will be solved soon. Too many parts of American culture derive their power from the confusion of fantasy and reality for their to be any real incentive to change.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Why have I not heard of all these school shootings? I cannot recall hearing of even one last year!
and here WA was on a good role maintaining it's stature as one of the more intelligent states. Oh well, Puyallup's not really known for its worldliness.
Not safer, more cowardly. Too chicken-hearted to stand up to the ignorant(school administrators) and the greedy (lawyers). Schools are now teaching kids to be cowards. How long can a nation survive the consequences of that?
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
They should just have an Animal Crossing tourney instead! That would rock!
"TAKE THAT ASSHOLE, I just got the Purple Flower Stationary! BUUYAH!"
This is the same school district that cancelled halloween this year. And they did it to avoid offending Wiccans. An independant survey of Wiccans in the area didn't reveal any who would have been offended.
t ml
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136946,00.h
This is an issue on which Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree. What we have here is a group of school administrators so extremely left wing and paranoid that they'll cancel just about anything.
The newest entry into the endangered lists, common sense. While everyone has been out ranting and raving about saving this animal, that plant, protecting minorities, and not hurting people's feelings we forgot to save one thing.
Here's a better story on the issue you cite.
... it's contradicted in the article. And the other reasons for the cancellation are also covered in this story.
I'm not sure where you got the information about an independent survey
Kids, we can't do anything that looks like we endorse violence. So no video games.
Now, get your football helmets on, get out there, and you POUND that other team into the GROUND! GO TEAM GO!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"$380 we were thinking was going to go straight into the Red Cross Tsunami fund," Alston said.
Charitable organizations such as the Red Cross often end up with funds that they are unable to make use of because those funds are directed towards a specific relief effort. If funds are donated specifically for the Tsunami disaster relief, then those funds may not be redirected to other efforts in the event that they have received a surplus of donations for that specific crisis. The result is that millions of dollars sit in accounts not being used.
I suggest that the donation be made, but not directed towards a specific relief effort, so that it can be used elsewhere if the Tsunami disaster has been dealt with.
I'm guessing that a high percentage of the folks here condemning the school don't own homes.
Why? Because homeowners go through this sort of painful deliberation regularly.
I live in a cul-de-sac and my yard happens to be the recipient of all the snow for the entire street. For a kid, it presents awesome potential for king-of-the-hill, snowball fights, digging tunnels, etc. It's truly a massive amount of snow.
But can I really let the neighborhood kids play in it? No way. The second one of them got hurt, it's MY homeowner's policy on the line. It's MY insurance that's going to not get renewed, forcing me to double my cost for homeowner's insurance when I have to resort to the state 'pool'. In other words, if I want to be a nice guy I have to accept an unreasonable risk.
The school is in the same position. You can bet that administrator and the school officials really thought what the kids were doing was cool. You can also bet that they sat back and said: "When we get sued, it's going to require resources in time and money that we *really* can't afford, given ever-tightening school budges."
So they came to the only reasonable conclusion.
To all these folks screaming about the state of our country, I pose this question: Are you really, honestly ready to stand up and say "I won't sue my neighbor, even if he's technically culpable"? Because until you are, people are going to be more concerned about protecting themselves than in freeing up their resources to share.
What we have here is a group of school administrators so extremely left wing and paranoid that they'll cancel just about anything.
"left wing" =/= "dipshit", dipshit.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
The Boy Scouts have done more good for the world, through millions of boys given a better life and taught to be good citizens both of their nations and world, than the American Criminal Liberties Union ever has.
The fact that someone attacked them for sticking by a moral position is just disgusting.
In Conclusion,
Fuck You.
If you can read this sig, congratulations, you have your glasses on!
I wonder what you'd have to do to start an offical rifle team (or pistol team, or trap team, or any other Olympic shooting sport team) at that school?
Have high school shooting teams become completely extinct?
this was a school event that was being funded by the district.
They are well within their rights to say "no" to anything they feel is inappropriate. Just because the parents signed the waivers wouldn't really solve anything.
And apparently, as far as I can see, they didn't clear WHICH game they would be playing with the board. Just switch the fucking game. Jesus.
hmmmm?
" Puyallup School District felt that due to school shootings across the country".
I did a check and found 29 shootings in 10 years. Okay maybe they have a point... But maybe if teens could not get a hold of guns... Naw guns do not kill people video games do? Okay this is just too strange. I give up schools can prevent a wacked out teen from getting a gun from his "parents, uncle, or friend" and shooting up the school by banning violent video games.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What we have here is a group of school administrators so extremely left wing
I don't know how you can associate the political position on just few facts, but if you want to do so, you should use right wing, instead of left wing.
I shot the sheriff
I'm not one that would ever say violence in videogames causes school shootings or any of that, but I think the link you're trying to make is tenuous at best, and probably just downright wrong.
While it can be argued that there are redeeming factors in Halo 2 (strategy, hand-eye coordination, etc), most of them pale in comparison to the literary value of a Shakespeare play. I think you would find it difficult to argue that the lessons of characterization, tragedy, meter, poetry, and theatre are somehow equivalent to those taught by Halo 2. Sure, there's violence in both, but there are highly redeeming qualities in Shakespeare outside of the violence.
It's a little bit like the arguement that "Lolita" is equivalent to videos of Child Pornography.
We're not talking about a huge city like New York City, San Francisco or Los Angeles where you can't say the word 'God' without offending 5 different religions. This is Puyallup, Washington. Not a large, metropolis where no one knows your name and no one cares enough to bother knowing your name. Just look at the article :
But the boys remind us that the district canceled Halloween celebrations because they were insensitive to the Wiccan religion.
No Halloween? What next? No Thanksgiving because it offends Native Americans? No Christmas cause Jews don't believe in Jesus? No New Year's vacation because the Chinese follow their own Lunar Calendar? Wiccan religion?! Comon! There are probably more Buddists in the city of LA than there are Wiccans in Washington state! Block the event on grounds of violence? Fine, but when you cancel a holiday just 3 months eariler, you're asking for trouble.
I wanted to bring Halo 2 to my video game club at my Canadian high school but several parents called in and told the principle so now we can't play violent games. Really sucks.
Sorry but i'm from around this area and I can think of no place i've visited that whined and worried as much as Washington. The school board acted appropriately because the parents are whiners, and the school board worries.
:(
It's depressing that our quality of life is so high that we waste our time crying about the non-proven possible link from vgames to violence instead of the health and wellbeing of others that are dying from tsunami related injuries.
come on people... think bigger than yourselves... you're just not that important.
These kids were just trying to help and you stomped their will along with their attempt to send some money. I wonder how many of these kids will try again to raise money... I suspect very few will
Here's the thing: where's the difference between genuine risk and merely being exposed to the idea of risk? Playing Halo is not, in fact, risky. It does not, in fact, put anyone in danger. It will not raise insurance premiums.
"Some battles are worth the fighting" (with apologies to LOTR). The school system should fight this one, because they would win it, hands down. And what would they gain by the winning? They'd win a stick they can wave at the next person who wants to threaten them with a lawsuit.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I am accusing them of being left wing because I think their actions are caused by political correctness.
If I thought they were clamping down on halloween because of the religious right I would be the first to say so.
Being a citizen of Washington State (I live about 30 minutes away from Puyallup... prounounced pew- ahl-up by the way) I can say with very little doubt that the majority people involved in this decision were left leaning.