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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.
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?
But that's just the thing... It's all politics. Politics do not belong in our schools. We Americans need to get over ourselves and start being real people again, forget all the politically correct bullshit. Seriously... This stuff is ruining our country. Secondly, if every single parent signed a waiver, then the school has no responcibilites anyway. Also you have to think about the fact that Halo is rated M (17+), how many of those kids are old enough to play the game without their parents consent anyway? Halo 2 is not really meant for children in the first place. But, since the parents agreed, then it's up to them, not the school now.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
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.
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.
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."
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.