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South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur"

Posted by timothy on from the tell-me-again-about-our-troubled-youth dept.

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes In South Carolina a 16-year old boy, Alex Stone, was arrested and charged with creating a disturbance at his school, as well as suspended, for choosing to write: "I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care of the business," in response to a class writing assignment. The story has attracted international attention.

12 of 421 comments (clear)

  1. Land of insanity by qbast · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only in America ...

  2. Mandatory panic! by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a. He's a he.
    b. He's a teenager.
    c. He goes to a school.
    d. He wrote the word "gun" in a "fantasy" story.

    Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots!

    Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.

    1. Re:Mandatory panic! by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots! Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.

      I doubt very much the reaction would have been the same if he'd written that he did it with bow & arrow.

      As far as I am concerned, it was the school's actions that were criminal. First, censorship is not the business of schools. Second, they called the police over a non-crime. They didn't even have a reasonable suspicion that any crime had been committed.

      It's one thing to say "no guns in school". It's quite another to ban any mention of them. This isn't China.

    2. Re:Mandatory panic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes this stuff gets outrageous. We had a personal experience with it 3 years ago. In a high school English class our son - 15 at the time - was assigned to write a simple biographical essay. They got to chose the subject and needed to have it approved by the teacher. Our son chose Mikhail Kalashnikov and the teacher approved it. They were then allowed to use class computers to do some research. The teacher freaked out and had our kid taken the to the office and there was a big brouhaha because he was "looking at a web site with guns on it". Really? Really? You don't expect to have some pictures of guns in biographical information about the guy who designed the fracking AK-47 along with several other guns? Argh! If they didn't want guns to be seen on school computers perhaps they should not allow students to select the designers of said guns as their biographical assignment. Yep, out of control loonies running the schools.

    3. Re:Mandatory panic! by BronsCon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper, and then shooting everyone in the place with it. Once I'd shot all of them, there was nobody to trigger the alarm or stop me from walking out with all the money.

      Letting people write the word "gun" on a piece of paper is very dangerous.

      And yes, for those who can't detect satire, this really did happen. We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    4. Re:Mandatory panic! by meerling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Irate? Yeah, I'd have become "irate" if some blithering idiot was accusing me of violating the law for a piece of fiction written for class in which his character (modeled as himself) hunted a species that became extinct millions of years ago. (Of course, being a "pet dinosaur" you could probably classify it as fantasy.)

      As to fiction including guns. Oh no! Go arrest EVERY AUTHOR ON THE PLANET!!!

      The ones disturbing the school were the police and the idiots that panicked over the short story/assignment. At least one person deserves to be fired.

      When I think back to the stories I wrote for class back in high school, morons like the ones at his school would have called out the police, fire department, FBI, NSA, NASA, Marines, Air Force, and MIB!

    5. Re:Mandatory panic! by flayzernax · · Score: 5, Insightful

      yeah, losing your shit is a sure fire way to demonstrate calm and respectful behavior to a young kid writing about *his* fantasies.

      if it was a girl she probably would have been treated differently too

      our culture is a culture of fear and cowardice :( plain and simple, when we all realise this collectively (lets hope it doesn't take a collective ass kicking) we'll grow up

      Until then, our empire is tiny and shitty compared to the aztecs and mighty vikings that came before it, we will see

    6. Re:Mandatory panic! by lgw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Through all of history, every place with a remotely hospitable climate was eventually governed by a nation with a strong military. If on government didn't have that, it would be conquered by one that did. There's no evidence that it's even possible to not have a strong central military for a long time (unless you live someplace where the environment is so hostile it's not worth anyone's effort to conquer, but sometimes even then).
       

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  3. Re:LOL by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Funny

    The police were probably just hoping they'd get a chance to shoot a dinosaur themselves.

  4. Yes it is. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This isn't China.

    We have gone to idiotic mode here in the States - beyond plaid.

    We have been taken over by the lying bullying pundits - Hannity,Maddow, O'Reilly, Oberman, etc ....

    Our media isn't really state controlled as it is corporate controlled - the corporations use the government to solidify their idiocy.

    Even my beloved NPR doesn't escape my cynicism when the Koch brothers sponsor it along with many corporate sponsors - regardless of their political leanings.

    We are being bombarded by shit.

    Shit media.

    All of it.

    And it has become impossible for us to differentiate the shit from the Truth.

    Mix in 110 proof pundits like Hannity and Limbaugh, and we're fucked.

    I am trying to cut myself off from media - even the Internet.

    It is getting ridiculous.

    To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hanh, 'Don't watch the news. If it is really important, you will hear about it.'

    I don't mean to stick my head in the sand, but when I cannot get the facts - or I have to sift through countless media outlets to get it - I just have to say, "Fuck it! Let me take care of my neighbor!"

  5. Re:Debbil in de details by WaffleMonster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you read the details of the story, it becomes quite a bit less sensational.

    The details make it worse because not kissing police officers asses resulted in bullshit disturbance charges. (e.g. retaliation)

    Not only did the grownups at the school abuse their authority so did the police.

  6. Re:Debbil in de details by sjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In what way? 16 year old writes two clearly flippant sentences that cannot possibly be true. School officials, apparently too mentally ill to distinguish reality from fantasy, call the cops. Cops, apparently also mentally ill, question the boy as if what he wrote could possibly be a confession. They then arrest him for the perfectly natural outrage he expressed at being subjected to their madness. Then principal Nutty McCuckoo suspends him for a week over the incident that the school instigated.

    In what way is that not sensational?

    In a just world, the students and their parents will mock and ridicule the principal until he is forced to resign. He brought it upon himself by refusing to be more mature than the kids in his charge.