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Students Banned From Bringing Pencils To School
mernilio writes "According to UPI: 'A Massachusetts school district superintendent said a memo banning sixth graders from carrying pencils was written without district approval. North Brookfield School District interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy said Wendy Scott, one of two sixth-grade teachers at North Brookfield Elementary School, did not get approval from administrators before sending the memo to all sixth-grade parents, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Thursday. The memo said students would no longer be allowed to bring writing implements to school. It said pencils would be provided for students in class and any students caught with pencils or pens after Nov. 15 would face disciplinary action for having materials 'to build weapons.'"
Sure why not when I could just break a chair leg off and bludgeon someone.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
I really thought the UK would do something like this first, but you yanks just had to one up us on paranoid didn't you?
Maybe it's me, but isn't the proper headline "Students NOT banned from bringing pencils to school"?
After all, the district said that the teacher sent the memo without permission of the superintendent and that it did not reflect district policy. So we got an overzealous and whacked out teacher, which is certainly not news.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Wew!
What is next? No steel rulers because they can be used as a knife and sword? What about paper? It can be used to give paper cuts. What about a winter scarf, it could be used as a weapon to strangle someone.
What is next? TSA screening before children enter the school? ohh, wait, that's already happened
first post?
That can't possibly be the whole story.
At least it's just a single moron teacher that's responsible for this asshatery, not the principal or the school board.
Technoli
A warm welcome to the future head of TSA.
Yeah, THIS site is a respectable, trustworthy source of news.
Ok, seriously seriously. I ask this honest question: Is a big percentage of American people really stupid and paranoid like that? Students can't bring pencils to schools? What should they bring, then, their PSPs?
Should we also cut their hands because they can hurt with them? http://myhappywindow.blogspot.com/
I remember some time ago when it was the rage to fold paper and shoot it at each other with rubber bands. For awhile rubber bands were considered a "regulated" item, and getting caught with a piece of rolled up paper could get you in trouble.
But ya, mental teachers here I think.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Pencils are certainly dangerous weapons, and books are hazardous too. I suggest a technical approach to child safety. Encase each child in a special pod that takes care of feeding and waste while connecting their minds to a central instruction program that provides enhanced virtual instruction. The excess body heat could even be recovered to provide energy to the school.
My school system published a no weapons policy in the early 90s. If I'd been a bit more of a troublemaker, I would have shown up one day with no books or pencils, because any of them could be used as a weapon.
It's nice to see that the bureaucracy has finally fulfilled its own stupidity.
"I'm going to make this pencil disappear.. TA-DA, IT'S GONE!"
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Students really should be hog tied and gagged. This will stop them from using their bodies as weapons (fists, feet, teeth, sheer mass pushing another mass, etc). Also, put each child into a little divider/cubicle so none of them can give "evil glances" that might emotionally harm another student. Completely immobilize and segregate each child, no harm can be passed from one to another!
But North Brookfield is too cowardly to use either
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
This is a step up. I've heard NJ schools basically make families buy everything the kids need for school. At least when I went in the 70s and 80s, they would provide us paper and art supplies; send you kid in with pencils, pens, and a trapper-keeper and you were good to go. It looks like basically the entire budget goes to paying teachers' and administrator's salaries now. They sure aren't using it to keep up the buildings, and the students have to beg for donations just to pay the bus driver to take them on a field trip to the other side of town.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Sure why not when I could just break a chair leg off and bludgeon someone.
You let your pupils sit!, in chairs?!?!? When I was a schoolboy, our classroom was in a paper bag, by the side of the road . . . etc.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Someone gets poked with a pencil, ban pencils and so on. This sort of "generals preparing to fight the last war" problem comes from a reactive posture rather than moving to address the real problem.
If you're worried about violence in the school get a really good security professional to watch the kids as they come in. Focus on the ones who "look like trouble".
Profiling has become a bad word in the US when it should be the focus of much of the security push. Profile, focus on behavior and get ahead of the threat.
Sometimes, the line between a school and an airport with a looming terror phobia is paper thin.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Maybe if we didn't teach the kids to build weapons out of the pencils / pens we wouldn't have an issue.
that I lived in the US, but have you completely lost your minds ? Have you become so paranoid that kids with pencils are a threat ?
Imagine, 1000 kids, each with 10-20 pencils ... OMG A weapon of mass destruction :)
... and ban students from schools. But then hordes of them will be hanging out on the streets, sharpening their pencils, and finding some trouble to get themselves into . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Yet another FINE example of intellectually stunted individuals being put in a position of educating our children.
And another FINE example of said intellectual amoeba eschewing proper channels, or even common sense in implementing something that's utterly pointless and only generates an aura of fear and distrust in what is, ostensibly, an educational institution.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
... the pen(cil) is mightier than the sword after all.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Well, the parents could always turn this around on the superintendent's precedent and claim that the school board is contributing to the delinquency of minors by providing the material to make weapons in the classroom. It's all pretty silly when we start making rules around what people *might* do with something rather than what they *do* with something.
We used to make slingshots with rubber bands and paperclips, and shoot bent staples.
It was a lot of fun until one stuck in my arm one day and all the other kids realized it was actually dangerous. I pulled it out like nothing, but nobody else wanted to play any more. -sigh-
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I herd the TSA has offered the school to install full body scanners at the gates. Apparently a class room was almost hijacked the other week by six year old terrorists carrying sticks of grey plasticine and safety scissors.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Why take the trouble to break off a leg when using the whole chair is almost as effective? Even most student desks nowadays are light enough to be effective, if rather awkward, weapons.
But this is little more than the next logical step proceeding forward from a paralyzing, irrational fear of weapons and conflict.
So much so that they'd rather take some dudgeon mongering website's word for what happened than to google the original sources and find out this is a non-story. Well, I don't mind being wet blanket, so I did it for you.
If you must know, a couple of sixth grade teachers got fed up with students playing with toy pens, then losing them and disrupting the class looking for them. So they decided to ban student owned writing instruments altogether, but rather than come right out and tell parents that their kids are badly behaved, they used a pen modified by one of the students to shoot spitballs as an excuse for the ban. Since using a writing instrument as a "weapon" conjures images of students stabbing each other in the eye with a pencil, that naturally garnered a lot more attention than the teachers expected. The acting superintendent stepped in, reversed the policy and wrote a memo explaining everything and suggesting everybody calm down.
But of course the story of a couple of beleaguered teachers being too timid to tell parents they'd raised a mob of brats isn't as much fun for people who like to complain about the nanny state.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Erm, well, according to the fount of all knowledge, Japan has a murder rate of 0.44 per 100,000, less than one tenth the rate in the US.
Still, never let facts get in the way of good old ideology, what?
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Are they going be like banks and chain pens to desk's?
whats next no forks or spoons in the lunch room?
EVEN PEOPLE IN PRISON GET PENS AND PENCILS.
I remember some time ago when it was the rage to fold paper and shoot it at each other with rubber bands. For awhile rubber bands were considered a "regulated" item...p>
I was given a detention for possessing a rubber band when i was in 6th grade. Crazy, right? Well here's the really unbelievable part: we were allowed to have and USE pencils all the time. Talk about living in a backward society.
Take a couple rulers, one with that groove in the middle and the holes. Add some braided rubber bands and a firing mechanism using the holes, and you have a quite dangerous pencil crossbow.
I'm getting all vengeful on one of my greatest pet-peeves and perennial nemeses.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
"V" darts shot by rubber bands and whatever that thing was called when you twisted a loop of paper over the end of a pencil and flicked it as if you were playing "pencil break"... ah yes the memories...
It's very simple, really. First, you give them a pedicure. Then, while they're admiring their feet, have someone bash them in the head.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Look at Japan! Sure, they have probably the most strict gun control laws of any place -- even police rarely carry guns. But does that stop murders and mayhem? Nope! It just making the killings more gruesome and painful.
The statistics seem to disagree with that statement:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita (Japan is 3rd from the bottom)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_murder_rate (4th from the bottom)
Who writes in pencil in sixth grade anyway. I recommend they all bring in a pen. }B^>
D@mn, people.
--
Toro
Johnny is staying home from school today principal, he told me, "My body is a weapon."
Apart from the fact that the idea is silly, by giving them school-issued pencils it's also pointless.
It doesn't stop murder and mayhem, but it stops murder and mayhem that involves guns. Guns serve to increase violent incidences because pissed off people can end fights as quick as they need to with them, rather than resorting to (slightly) more sane things like yelling. Would you rather have someone offend you deeply, or end up in the hospital (if you're lucky) as opposed to the morgue? Every country that controls firearms has lower incidences of crime than those that don't. Have you never seen Fahrenheit 9/11?
how is babby formed?
Correction - some 20 Caveman-Build 6th graders have the strength for this. There's a reason they pwned recess.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
we looped the rubber band between our thumb and index finger and fired them like a slingshot
didn't want to waste a rubber band, had more control, and more discrete. I was quite the good shot. It was the little darts that were rolled really tight that were the most 'effective'. Only the amateurs would try to shoot loosely rolled large strips of paper.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I dismantled my crib when I decided I wanted to upgrade. Brought the thing out in pieces to my poor, shocked, aghast mother.
I also have graphite under the skin on one finger from the same sort of accident. I wonder how comon it is.
I have to admit there's a "dark passenger" part of me that loves this shit, and thinks the people of this country deserve every damned scan, grope and pencil ban that the government can dump on them. Is that wrong? It's not a big part, but it's there.
The big surprise to me is that TSA hasn't yet banned pencils.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
As TFS says, it was just a single teacher...
The Teaching Safety Administration?
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
they chain the knives (in the kitchen) and the tools in the workshops to the tables (or so I've heard)...
seems perfectly reasonable to me - chain the pencils to the desks - or do everything in fucking crayon.
remember what Joe Pesci did to that guy in GoodFellas? get your shinebox?
jokes aside ..when I was in fifth grade, one kid stabbed another kid with a #2 pencil and the tip broke off in his hand.. then there was the stapler incident.. cha-chunk - right through the ear lobe.
Did murder STOP? No. I didn't attempt to compare rates.
Yes you did. You stated that weapons control laws never "decreased" violence, not "stop[ped" violence.
I remember the wadded up paper bullets and rubber bands. We also had kids use a thumb tack and the end of a shoelace to make a dart they would then shoot with a straw. Not to mention many of us would take our pencil and try to imbed it in the ceiling tile (music room with a 40 foot high ceiling had as many as 20 pencils lodged in it at once, funny to look at).
Worst thing that happened to any of us was a Saturday school. And by the time we got to high school, everyone had grown out of that phase.
Making kids come in to school on a Saturday morning is far worse punishment than an out of school suspension. They could have suspended me for a month and I would still make the honor roll.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Instead of stabbing people to death with pencils in the courtyard, they would just use a stick from the trees nearby or wait until they are in class and the "weapons" are provided.
Honestly, most bullies I've encountered used fists. FISTS; Not knives or pencils... I say ban the teachers and replace them with a video. Hell, most teachers just tell the kids what pages of their text book to read and answer anyway.
only the bullies will have pencils.
Actually, I am pretty sure that measure is to counter violence, but since when has "weapons control" laws ever resulted in decreased violence? [...] But does that stop murders and mayhem? Nope! It just making the killings more gruesome and painful.
You explicitly said that strict gun laws did not decrease the amount of violence found in Japan and that it did in fact make the murders committed there more gruesome.
Not to mention that declaring all non-perfect solutions to be of negligible effect is a fallacy in itself. We may be unable to completely stop murder but that doesn't mean that measures taken to reduce homicide rates (such as making firearms less available) are automatically pointless.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Why not get it straight from the Worcester T&G? Oh right, because the story died already.
Supposed Ban Over
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
Gordon Noseworthy was the superintendent of Silver Lake School District in Kingston, MA 10 years ago. I think they kicked him out of there for crap like this. All I remember is he didn't cancel school during a blizzard, since he's from Canada he felt 3 feet 'wasn't that much'.
The most dangerous thing in schools now-a-days is all that learning. I mean, if people can think critically then they can question your authority, correct? As an added bonus, if they are too dumb to even know what a pencil is then the world would be that much safer. I vote we cut to the chase and ban learning all together.
I'd rather have a higher murder rate so long as it goes hand in hand with the ability to defend myself easily, especially if I were infirm or outnumbered.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
So the issue is 2 teachers and not the entire school or district.
But still, that any professional involved with education could think pencils are too dangerous for students to carry around, what's next? No books--wouldn't want a paper cut? How long before American public schooling consists of children sitting silently on the floor all day because any action with any object could result in someone getting hurt?
Before you dismiss that as a ridiculous extreme, allow me to point you to the story about 2 teachers who wanted to ban students from bringing pencils to school.
Sure it's only 2 teachers. For now.
Fire that stupid waste of flesh. Do it now.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Thank you for that memory of my 7th grade (1970 timeframe). Our other favorite was disassembling the old Bic pens so that you could use the hollow tube as a blow gun.
Just another day in Paradise
This is a great idea. Until reality kicks in. You guys remember classroom supplies? The box of crayons that were all broken and had missing colors. The extra book in case you forgot yours that was expanded from getting wet and had torn pages and smelled like cheese. I'm pretty sure that the pencil box will soon be full of broken pencils with missing erasers and there will not be enough for everybody to have one. How will little Billy fill in the bubbles without a #2?
While we are at it, lack of sleep impairs a child's learning ability. Doing homework often keeps kids up late at night. So, homework impairs a child's ability to learn!
This _has_ to be a nefarious plot by Microsoft to force PC's onto students.
Quite painful. I'm so traumatized I 'll probably have to use these expensive push-pencils for the rest of my life.
And girls, after pencils that was the most traumatizing thing, they definitely should ban girls. Yes, pencils and girls. Oh and chalk.
Well, even today, people aren't being afraid of being shot with swords.
Except for Like-Likes and Leevers I guess, but even then they only have to worry about it if you have full hearts.
Japan has a homicide rate of 1.1 murder per 100,000 compared to the USA of 8.7 per 100,00 - far less murder and mayhem. We average about 11 firearm deaths per 100,00 (accidents account for much of this) while Japan averages less than 1 death per 100,00. We're leading in homicides and firearm death - USA! USA! USA! Now about pencils, kids don't seem to have a big problem there... lets start with reducing the guns freely available.
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
You're thinking of Britain, not Japan. Britain outlawed guns and so the people switched to using knives in murders and mayhem. Now they're freaking out about knives.
This is a common argument from americans.
It's also an especially retarded one.
All this leads to is a policy of escalation. I get a gun to defend myself, of course the robbers are going to get guns. Bigger ones too. So then I get a bigger gun, and next thing you know you're being menaced by people with machineguns.
In the end, guns don't help you defend yourself. They only ensure any encounter with something you need to defend yourself against will result in a fatality.
Canadians have, per capita, as many guns as americans do. But 99% of them are hunting weapons, not designed to be used against other people. And in the city where I live (600k people), we have less than one murder per year.
And I don't have to lock my door at night. And I don't need a gun to defend myself.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
There's a reason sporks were invented.
Just another day in Paradise
Last time I checked screwdrivers were not allowed on planes, but pencils were.
Strange... But it's good to know they teach paranoia at school nowadays.
Privacy is terrorism.
No girls here and who uses paper anymore?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
After some of the student essays I've seen, I'm surprised they waited this long.
The country where stupidity know no bounds
... and this man works in education? Oddly he seem immune to it.
You cannot ever eliminate all items which can be used to harm people. It's not possible and it not worth working on beyond actual weapons. At some point schools need to focus on schools. The smartest and brightest are the best of our future.
Yes, kids will fight, and they will get hurt. But responding to a non-problem and non-issue and threatening students who bring the basic tools of learning for the last ... ummm ... 300 years is insane.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
When I was in high school I was in the middle of a ring of kids who were pushing me around and calling me names. With anger building up, I tightly gripped my pencil held below my waist. I was interrupted in my thoughts by a teacher intervening, who dragged me off to the principal's office for my treating actions. Fortunately, my parents intervened and convinced the school that I was no danger.
On a similar note, in High school physics, I broke out in an argument regarding another student not returning a book she borrowed. She ended up stabbing my palm with a mechanical pencil, which she claims no harm would have come to me had I not tried to defend my self. I can still see the pencil's mark tattooed into my to this day.
I guess the idiot kids who can't learn for shit because they grew up with computers have gotten to the age where they're idiot adults who can't teach for shit.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Technically suicide can be construed as murder, in which case Japan is well ahead of us with 24.4/100k compared to our 11.1/100k, the difference being more than enough to make up for the gap of 4.6 in our murder rates. (also from Wikipedia)
My webcomic
They're totally succeeding at outstupiding the TSA. I don't think even airports have banned pencils yet.
Pencils don't kill people. People kill people!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Trying to measure murder/homicide rates like this are hard. Because all countries classify things differently. In the US VH, falls under the homicide area. In Japan it doesn't, nor does acts that cause the death of another person. But in the US they do.
Om, nomnomnom...
From Why They Don't Need to 'Touch Your Junk' At Israeli Airports.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I attended both private and public schools in the U.S., and I learned far more in private schools. While the level of intellect of the students between schools was largely the same, we were all more engaged in our education at the private schools. The level of intellect and interest of all of my private school teachers (save one), was much higher than in any public school. In public school, I was basically taught how to pass a test, not taught anything relevant other than how to figure out which train would win a race from two different cities at two different speeds. The one exception was at a very small private school (~100 in the whole high school) in which an Algebra teacher was so bad at it that three of us got permission to teach ourselves and finished the book by the end of the year while the rest of the class didn't get nearly that far (and she was let go before the next school year). If there had been such an incompetent teacher in public schools (and there were in my experience), we never would have received permission to go on without the rest of the class, that teacher would have kept his/her job, and we wouldn't have learned nearly as much. The fact that the private school acknowledged the problem and allowed the best solution is astounding if you've only gone to public schools your whole life.
There is a reason that private schools exist: parents want their children to succeed in life, and the best chance that they have in the U.S. is to go to an excellent private school or to be home-schooled. Trusting your children to a government funded school ensures that they will receive the same mediocre education that the vast majority of the population receives.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
If these people had any imagination at all, they'd see the obvious: everything can be used as a weapon or part of a weapon. They'll just have to ban everything, including the kid's clothing, and put their arms and legs in shackles and ball-gags and march them around like they're Dr. Hannibal Lecter, just to be sure that nobody has any opportunity to harm themselves or others. Oh, and they might get to learn something.. so long as they don't get taught anything that could even remotely be used improperly.
Seriously, is this what it's come down to? Between overpaid, underqualified administrators who are more interested in lining their own pockets, teachers who never should have been in the first place who now have tenure, low pay for teachers and crappy conditions for teachers who are good at it and who give a damn about the kids and who end up paying for supplies and books out of their own pockets, I'm amazed that any kid has any chance at all of learning anything!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Of course there are cities in Canada that aren't as safe as the one you live in. I should know, I live in one.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
In Churchill Manitoba, school buses routinely have a rifle strapped above the windshield, in case the driver should suddenly want to start shooting.
At my 1960's school in Somerset, while still being trained to defend our shores, we were equipped each Monday afternoon with .303 rifles, 10 'blank' cartridges, and bussed to the Quantock hills. Unauthorised, we found that 'Venus' brand pencils, with their white plastic ends as expanding 'wads', made perfect muzzle-load ammunition. A good shot would embed a pencil many inches into a distant chosen tree. Future lumberjacks or archaeologists will find them there. Would that we were allowed to defend our shores nowadays.
You know, if they are allowed to arm themselves with pencils, soon they will advance to rubber bands, then harder weapons. Soon the school will be destroyed by a carelessly handled nuclear warhead!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Does anyone want to place bets that it was a student who tried to pass this off as a teacher-created memo?
This sig no verb.
How is a gun not designed to be used on people? Every gun is designed to use kinetic energy to inflict physical trauma on a target, usually a fleshy target. That encompasses people, rabbits, moose, and birds. It may not be intended for use on people, but its design certainly doesn't preclude it.
They could learn how to make bombs, shivs, etc....
Better ban learning too...
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I... hope you're not trying to draw a link between gun control laws and suicide rate.
Please set my mind at ease.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So how would you expect an elderly person to defend themselves in a home invasion? Calling 911? The police will arrive just in time to draw the proverbial chalk outlines.
How about a dog? Dogs aren't particularly effective defenses unless you mistreat the dog so it hates everybody equally or you've trained it to be an attack dog.
If someone breaks into your home with the intent to steal your property and/or harm you, are you supposed to just let someone walk out of your house with your stuff or let your wife get murdered?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
...I know the pen is supposed to be mightier than the sword.... ...but don't these school officials think they're taking things a little too literally?
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
I teach at a small charter high school here in N. AZ. Aside from grading papers, the bane of my existence is that students come to school WITHOUT so much as a single pencil with which to write! They have their cell phone, they have their cigarettes and lighter, and they can afford piercings and tattoos, but not a single pencil! WHAT was that "teacher" thinking?
Weapons of Maths Destruction
and next thing you know you're being menaced by people with machineguns.
Seriously? Have you ever been to America? The number of people killed with machine guns is tiny - you'd be hard pressed to find more than a couple of cases in the last decade.
By citing such a ridiculous threat you only weaken your own argument.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Dunno, when I was in school, I had at least one knife on me every single day for most of my school years. Plus lighters and a torch.
End result? Teachers came to me instead of walking down to the main teacher's lounge when they needed to cut anything or start the Buthane in Chemistry.
Now I am working. And I carry a Victorinox Swiss Tool while doing desk work.
So yah, ban all them weapons!!!111
You do not lock your door and do not own a weapon? If you are for real be a man and provide your street address right here. Otherwise I'm calling bullshit.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
oh thank god for that. i read "no longer allowed to bring pencils or pens" and i misread it as "no longer allowed to bring penises". hum, must be something wrong with me...
"We did nothing when they took our pencils away from us. We did nothing, when they disarmed us by taking our spoons away from us. After that, they took away our bananas."
http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/3108686
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
Get to the root of the problem and ban students.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
What happened to personal responsibility and the understanding that "accidents" happen. Accidents used by be "no fault" back when I was a kid.
The end of the world is nigh.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.