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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.'"
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?
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?
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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.
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?
try to play it in coop in a lan setting for a weekend.. gets real old real fast.
man vs. man.
anyways.. what's the sad part is that they're disallowing it because they think that somebody might say to them later that they're endorsing violence.. they KNOW that it should be 100% OK - but are too afraid to let it happen.
bunch of sissies.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
I agree completely. just trying to add some humor. Want something really funny? check out my other post on this topic. I get modded troll for basically saying what you just said & another guy gets +4 insightful for bashing me.
/. as a whole.
lol, this is a sad reflection on
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.
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.
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."