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Student Arrested For Classroom Texting
A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after she refused to stop texting during a high school math class. The girl denied having a phone when confronted by a school safety officer, but a female cop found it after frisking her. The Samsung Cricket was recovered "from the buttocks area" of the teenager, according to the police report. The girl was banned from school property for a week, and is scheduled for an April 20 court appearance for a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. I applaud the adults involved for their discretion and temperance in this heinous case of texting without permission.
Who wants to make the grammar joke?
"heinous case of texting without permission."
I think it has more to do with refusing bit than the texting bit.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Students shouldn't be texting in class. If a student refuses to follow the rules, you have to do something. In our lawsuit-happy culture, calling the police is pretty much the only option. If you were being insubordinate at work, you would be fired and they'd have security escort you from the building. If you refused, you would be arrested.
I can recommend. I'll even cut y'all in on the finders fee.
Hmm, this "phone in the butt" story appeared just after the bar of soap phone story... cue jokes about bending over.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Fixed it for ya. Seriously, they are in school to pay attention and learn, not sit there an text people.
When I was in High School, disruptive kids got sent to the Vice Principal for this kind of thing. Why did this get charged as a real crime? Don't schools have any discretion or judgment left to them anymore?
"No more butt-dialing!"
Oh wait you said butt not vag.
You are mandated to shut up, not text or do anything. Lest the cops come in and frisk your ass (and subsecuently finds a not-illegal item).
Poor kids.
Its good they have no rights. This way they can find out early that "rights" are not for everyone. Hell, as time passess, it seems they are for noone.
NO SIG
First offense, confiscate the phone and give it back at the end of the day.
Second offense, give her in detention, confiscate the phone and require the parents to pick it up in person if they want it back.
Subsequent offenses, repeat step two. The parents will get sick of this pretty quickly, and she will find herself without a phone.
It's not that hard.
The teacher asked the student to stop. Is there some other action a school is allowed to take with a student who refuses to follow instructions?
I think you are supposed to give them a trophy or something.
It helps with their self esteem;-)
Had this been another country, one more serious about education, and parenting, this character would have been given an immediate failing grade and forced to repeat. But this is America, and we molly coddle our kids, who generally end up laying an egg when it comes to technical topics in high school.
This is about the punishment - not the crime. What the hell is wrong with you. Do you tie your shoes in little nazies. In an age where we find Judges being paid to send kids to jail we should be questioning every single one of these incidents. What's the motive here? And how did we come to this?
Good move! Save time for the important things in life, like self-indulgent narration of things you didn't do.
I don't get it. You have some 15 yro's that go and murder someone, and they have hangups about trying them as adults, yet a teen girl, acts up in class....and she get slapped with charges by the police? How fsked up is that? Geez...give her some detention, but, it doesn't sound like she committed any offense that required being charged with a crime?!?!?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Before everyone goes spouting off about how we're becoming a police state, has anyone (including submitter) bothered to read the linked police report? The cop refers to "prior negative contacts" with this person for both him and the administration. The chick ignores the teachers, lies to the cops, and brazenly continues to text in class. It's too bad the cops had to waste cycles getting involved, but judging from the police report the school personnel were at the end of their rope.
-R
Indeed because, as we all know, refusing to comply or follow orders in a non-military school is indeed a crime against all of society punishable by a sentence decreed in a court of law!
Snowflake had hidden the 'phone in her underwear so having Police present is the only way to avoid a lawsuit.
No sig today...
I mean, is sneezing to loud now disorderly? Or running to the bathroom when you really have to go? Yes. My daughter got a disciplinary notice written up on her for "disobeying" and "avoiding work" because on her way back from going to the nurse's office to use her asthma inhaler, she had an attack of diarrhea and so stopped into the bathroom to use the toilet rather than walking to the other end of the school, asking the teacher first, then walking back. She's 8, but apparently yes, she requires the teacher's permission to have a bowel movement. Yes, I have complained about this, and yes, the school district has insisted the teacher did nothing wrong.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Apparently you did not read the criminal complaint. The student was "known to the security officer" as a problem , and had "negative contacts" with the administrators in the past. Sounds to me like a problem child, who continued to act out, from a broken home, had repeatedly ignored the rules, assuming that she could skate out of all trouble. And since it was school she probably could, but in this case, they decided to file the charges. Finally she is forced to have a little accountability for her actions.
Not only did she lie about her actions, she repeatedly gave false numbers to the school for contacting her parents, and wasted several hours of the school employees time. She ought to be billed by the school district for the amount of time wasted by her.
Treat teenagers like adults they act like adults. Don't and they will always act like little children.
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
I've personally been involved in situations where a student's refusal to cooperate lead to the situation escalating far beyond what was necessary. I think sometimes they believe that if they dig in their heels, nothing bad will happen and the adult will let up. They don't understand that digging in just escalates the situation. When I encounter such a student, I usually have to explain the complete consequences of their actions (including ultimately getting cuffed and hauled out if need be), before they relent.
From reading the report, it's pretty clear that the student had multiple opportunities to come clean before being arrested, and refused to take advantage of them. Yes, I agree that arresting the girl was overkill, but the report mentions that the officer had prior [negative] dealings with the student before, so I would suspect that there is a story here that goes back a little farther than "ZOMG STUDENT ARRESTED FOR TEXTING." Arresting the girl was overkill *if* this was her first disciplinary issue. If this is one of a long string of issues, it's a different story. When sane, measured discipline isn't getting through to a kid, it may be a good time to over-react and try to get the kid's attention.
I don't know the kid, and I don't know her history, so I can't judge whether or not the officer was out of line. I can imagine plenty of scenarios where it is, and plenty where it isn't. I've had students get in a disproportionate amount of trouble for similarly stupid reasons, and it usually plays out the same way: a student with a long disciplinary history tries to press their luck over something moronic, and comes up with the short straw.
Actions have consequences.
Yes and consequences of this action should be either detention or in school suspension.
In this day and age.. "in loco parente" has been crushed by all the parents suing schools and teachers..
Overreact much? Kids will be kids and any adult that expects that kind of obedience is better off being wrong. This happened in the US where much of our wealth ultimately comes from that sort of "attitude problem." Just because adults can behave in anti-social ways because of their power doesn't mean that it's appropriate to do so.
Fires are a very different matter, I can not conceive of a way in which that analogy is cogent. Like it or not in most places kids do not have the option of withdrawing from schools or moving over to other ones just because they're not being appropriately taught.
The scary thing is that this sort of thing happens every generation and yet we've yet to get even a single generation that doesn't get drunk on power when it's their turn.
It probably goes like this. 1) School officer has no legal authority to "frisk" students without their conent. (If they try, they risk a law suit), 2) Student refuses to consent to frisking, and refuses to cooperate. 3) Police are called, at which point school has no more say in the matter 4) Police are pissed off at having been called, and decide to charge student with disorderly conduct and being a pain in the ass.
At step 2), we don't know why the school couldn't handle this internally. I'm sure that they would have if they could have. No school principal / board wants this kind of publicity if they can avoid it!
We don't know this, but I suspect that this girl has a long history of being disruptive and uncooperative at school. The school has probably tried all sorts of other things in the past, to no avail. The principal probably (very bravely IMO) figured that calling the police might actually get through this girl's thick skull that being a disruptive pain in the ass is a REALLY BAD IDEA. And it might get her parents' attention as well.
Actually it's adults acting like children, probably because they never got smack down as a child.
Reminds me of a time when I was sitting with an old friend in a coffee house. The friend was a former DEA undercover, who looked about 10 years younger than he was, so they would send him into schools to bust drug dealers. We're having our coffee while the group of teenagers behind us is talking about the pot they scored next door in the alley. After listening to them for about 20 minutes or so, my friend casually leaned over and said, "You know, I don't care if you want to screw with your own mind, but you do realize that everyone here could hear every word you said?" When they replied, "So what?" He pulled out his badge, flashed it, and said, "Cause you never know when they guy next to you works for the DEA. You get one pass, next time be a little brighter."
I had never before seen people piss their pants in public before, but MAN did they move getting the heck out of there.
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
Education is not required by law school attendance is.
The reason for school is to cage all the kids, free up more adults for the workforce and to train the next generation of worker bees. Follow orders blindly, do as everyone else does, do not question imposed authority etc is what you are taught in school. But most of all do not think for yourself, do not hold independent ideas and do not think you know better than those in charge.
As an adult with a honors degree etc and 20+ years of work experience in engineering I am 100% against mandatory schooling the damage done to the young mind is devastating and in the majority of cases irreversible.
Your post would seem to show a remarkable lack of thinking on just what School is and is for. I would suggest you read how and why mandatory schooling was introduced in the US.
1. What makes you think it would do much? If a student is _that_ disruptive, to the point of flat out refusing to cooperate or obey in any form or shape, not to mention the attitude to the cops bit, I'd say the parents aren't too involved in her education, one way or another.
Best case scenario: it's some single mom who threw in the towel long ago. You might make the mom unhappy a bit, she'll sob on some friends' shoulder, but she's not going to even know where to start to discipline her daughter.
Second worst: the parents don't really give a flying fuck in the first place. They just hope that their daughter grows up without much attention, like the tree in the back yard. Or that if someone has to do things right, it's the teacher, society, whoever other than them.
Absolute worst: the parents actually are proud of that antisocial behaviour and encourage it. Behind many a sociopathic school bully is a parent who's proud that his son/daughter looks out for number one and puts those losers in their place. Behind many, "bah, learning is for loser nerds. Who needs it?" attitudes is some parent who slipped through school on the exact same attitude, and still rationalizes it as the right thing.
2. If she refuses to leave class or stop, what are you going to do? Let her sit there and keep making a point of being a git until the parents get there? Even if the parent immediately drops everything and comes over, you're realistically looking at another hour fucked up before they actually get there.
I know people, heck, work with people where the dad commutes half way across the country, the mom commutes two cities away, and either of them can't get home in less than two hours even if they wanted to.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Lying is not a crime.
Yes it is. It's called fraud. And as part of their education children are taught that lying has consequences. When they reach adulthood the consequences may be more severe.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
Consequences that are way out of proportion like the relevant case are tyranny.
On the other hand, as I'm fairly confident that this will go nowhere, it makes for a good story when she's older.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
There is a difference between playful misconduct and willful disobedience. Historically the former was handled with detention and the latter with corporal punishment. Since corporal punishment has all but been made illegal what tool do you use?
So the only choices to deal with the willful disobedience of a minor are physical beating or arrest by the police? Who the hell modded that insightful?
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
There. Fixed that for ya.
Well, at least in the schools I went to, sleeping in class wasn't allowed either, and thats not disruptive.
Still, I'd see it as a preventive step. Texting in class isn't a big deal, but texting during an exam (which often happens in the same room, under similar circonstances) can have pretty dire consequences.
So tell her to go to detention.
"No."
"Ok, then you're suspended, leave school."
"No."
If someone disregards the authority of a teacher, what makes you think they'll suddenly start respecting it when the punishment is upped?
Im really interested in hearing your alternative to mandatory school, seriusly, no sarcasm (no personal attack eigther).
I live in what most people call a 3rd world country (but we are delusional about it and call it "In ways of development"), I'm currently aspiring for a master degree, have 10+ years of work experience, and I think that the biggest problem in this nation is not drug cartels, is the lack of education for the general public.
While the elementary education is mandatory by law, the reality is that just a tiny fraction of the population here actually learns to read and write. I agree that 10 years of education makes your mind work in a very "deterministic" way, but I can't imagine a worse way.
Maybe I'm wrong.
DON'T PANIC.
The student was not arrested for texting. The student was arrested for refusing to turn over the phone and lying to the instructor and the police officer about it.
Had this student turned over the phone to the instructor, there likely would have been a small punishment, perhaps confiscation of the phone and detention. Now this kid gets a juvenile record (purged at 18), a court appearance, and will perhaps learn a lesson...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I suggest you read the arrest report in its entirety. Basically the officer waited till after class to ask her if she had a phone. After she said no, the officer confirmed with the teacher and two other students who had seen her with the phone. After being confronted with this, she STILL denied it. So the officer arrested her for disorderly conduct for her disrupting class and lying to him.
She then proceeded to lie to the officer regarding the phone number that could be used to contact her parents. After eventually getting in contact (presumably by requesting the information from the school records), her mother was contacted and informed that her daughter would be searched. At that point, the female officer (who had been sent) proceeded to perform the search. Where the phone which belonged to her father was found.
This is not the case of an officer immediately arresting her because she was texting. It was an officer who arrested her after he confirmed that several people had seen her texting despite being asked not to. He even stated that her arrest was partially due to her continued lying.
I read the article, and the redacted transcript, and there's no sign of them issuing her with a detention, or a suspension. Besides which, when a child is suspended you call their parents and request for them to pick them up, not kick them off the grounds (duty of care).
In the end it's the parents you escalate to in a situation like this, not police. There's a whole process beyond that, including a school pscyh councilor, more suspension and then expulsion before you anything like this should happen.
I agree.
In this day and age, kids seem to be getting overdoses of "it's a free country and I want my rights", giving them absurd senses of entitlement over anything and everything.
Seriously, society has gone mad. The concept of individual rights has been twisted into some disfigured unrecognizable mass of idiocy. We can't spank our kids any more, which is why the current generation is such a rabble of unruly, apathetic, self-centered brats. On the other hand, civil liberties are so far gone that we can't protest outside of designated protest zones.
Kids need spankings. It's worked for thousands of years of human behavioral evolution. Governments need checks. Demonstrated over thousands of years of human social evolution.
People, its time to pull our heads out of our asses.
I hate printers.
I read it too, I know it's not in there, the point is that it's an ineffective solution because there's no ability to enforce it. Since you did read it you'll know that they tried to call her parents, and she did everything in her power to make it impossible for them to make contact, of course she could have just said nothing and made it impossible.
So, given that my point what "none of that works if the child doesn't cooperate" do you have any suggestions that don't require exactly that?
Detenion: Refuse
Suspension: Refuse
Parents: Withhold the contact
councilor: Refuse
I understand that these are routes that went untried, but I think it's misguided to assume they would have had a different result given the attitude of the child in question.
Studies say that it doesn't help, but here's something I've never seen studied:
When I was a kid I was a fairly well behaved boy, one of the other kids I grew up with was not. He was spanked regularly because he frequently acted out and was violent and destructive.
Now, true, he was not helped, he's still a moron, BUT, my desire to avoid a similar fate lead me to be very well behaved. There are some kids that can't be helped, but that doesn't mean that making an example of them can't yield fringe benefits.
I don't think the parent was trying to say that she did not warrant punishment, just that it shouldn't be a "criminal" case. As annoying and obnoxious as she may have been, it does not warrant having a criminal record! This type of situation should have been dealt with at the school level (suspension, etc) but not in a criminal case.
There are kids that get physically assaulted by other students in high school and all that happens is maybe a suspension the first 3 or 4 times. For these kinds of assaults to get mere administrative punishment and a texter to get a criminal record is absolutely STUPID. It pisses me off when people complain about problems not being dealt with while big important ones get completely ignored.
From Wikipedia: "In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual."
Does the rule of inclusion elude you? Fraud is performed through lying, but lying does not necessarily imply fraud. Just as a DUI requires you to be driving, yet driving is not illegal.
Research on behavior modification shows that punishment (like, say, spanking) results in escape and avoidance behaviors and usually results in people reverting to the unwanted behavior once the source/threat of punishment is taken away. Positive reinforcement for wanted behaviors (and removing the reinforcement in response to unwanted behaviors) is more effective, longer lasting, and generally results in a more psychologically healthy individual.
And, just for some anecdotal evidence, I worked for 3 years in a group home for abused and emotionally disturbed children. The ones who were physically beaten seemed to have learned from their parents not how to behave properly, but that anger and violence are the way to respond to someone who does something you don't like.
If you have to call the police just because you have a 'disruptive' student silently texting, you won't get much teaching done either, and should be looking for a new profession.
So its a criminal offense to text during class? I must be missing something...
Anecdotal evidence of course, but, it sure kept my young ass in line. I respected authority, I learned to avoid an ass whuppin' by doing what I was supposed to.
I've noticed too...there seems to be a steady decline of child discipline and respect for adults and authority since we stopped corporal punishment.
Hell, back when I grew up, it wasn't just your parents...ANY parent in the neighborhood could full well swat your ass if you acted up, and they'd call your parents (who were thankful for the help) and you'd likely get another one when you got home.
Try that today..and the parent/neighbor is a criminal....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I see your studies, research and science, and raise you 10,000 years of what worked. Positive reinforcement works *as well*, it's not a binary choice where one excludes the other.
For me I got Nintendo if I ate my vegetables. I got a spanking when I set off a firecracker in my neighbor's dog house.
Sorry, spanking works. I don't give a shit what some band of idiots greedy for research grants say.
I was spanked, my parents were spanked, their parents were spanked. It works, and has worked, since forever.
I hate printers.
This is the part that confuses me...
Why are police involved at all? Is it common to have police enforcing school policy? What is this, China? Oh wait.. I bet China doesn't do that...
What part of this was criminal in any way?
Actions have consequences.
Yes and consequences of this action should be either detention or in school suspension.
If she had surrendered the phone upon the 1st request by the campus officer then detention would be appropriate. Since she continued to claim that she did not have a phone and further concealed it. She escalated it beyond detention or in-school suspension. I think that a fine is correct in this case. If you read the transcript of the officer's report, this student is known to the administration as a "problem".
This absurdity I would assume stems from what's called "resist, obstruct or delay" around here, but similar statues are common across the country. Basically this gem of the legal system makes it illegal to lie to a cop, or not give them any information they ask for. Apparently the right to remain silent doesn't apply until you're actually under arrest.
I personally have had the misfortune to be arrested and charged with this. I was at a friends house, and was taking a nap on the couch while they had gone out to the store. They came home while I was asleep and didn't wake me. I awoke to a loud pounding on the door right next to the couch. I got up and opened the door to see a cop standing there. They asked if my friend was home. I said "I don't think so" and looked over my shoulder. While my head was turned the cop said "I'm going to look around" and walked right past me into the house and into my friends bedroom. They found him laying on the bed and arrested him (he had a warrant for a failure to appear), and then walked back into the living room, looked at me and said "I'm arresting you for resist obstruct or delay" and handcuffed me and took me to jail where I spent the next 2 days.
I got the charge dropped after shelling $600 out on a lawyer and doing 24 hours of community service, all for saying "I don't think so."
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I read this article yesterday. The student got arrested for not stopping an action after class was stopped and the supervisors where putting school on hold waiting for her to stop doing an action. I don't like police states myself, but I like lame-ass attention-whores trying to pump up their ad revenues just as little.
Being arrested for not obeying an authority is not the same thing as being arrested for texting. mmkay?