In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment For a Novelist

An anonymous reader writes A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Md. middle school has been placed on leave and—in the words of a local news report — "taken in for an emergency medical evaluation" for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting. The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace's Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office, according to news reports from Maryland's Eastern Shore. The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future."

Comments

Sue the bastards

[realmolo]

Wow. Talk about a lawsuit that you are *guaranteed* to win.

This guy is going to make millions.

Re:Sue the bastards

[Jack9]

Let's hope so.

Re:Sue the bastards

[jythie]

On the other hand, in my high school we had a teacher with whom a freshman became obsessed including showing up drunk at his house. Even though he never did anything with her and rebuffed her advances he was fired because parents were concerned about one of their daughters and a teacher.

Meanwhile one of our other teachers, a woman, was known to sleep with students and married one after he graduated, nothing was ever done to her. The difficulty of firing a teacher pretty much comes down to how much PR is involved and if the union feels it will be better served getting rid of the person vs keeping them, either due to internal or external political concerns.

Re:Sue the bastards

[Archangel Michael]

Think of the children is the battle cry of Tyrants everywhere. I won't vote for anyone, even if I agree 99% with them politically, if they make any statement similar to "do it for the children". I urge every slashdotter to do the same this election cycle, even if it means voting for the "other guy". AND let the Politicians know that hiding behind skirts and baby strollers is what terrorists do.

Re:Sue the bastards

[ShanghaiBill]

So what you're saying is that rather than a story of "Over-reaction by elected officials and law enforcement", we instead have a story about "piss-poor and irresponsible reporting by the mainstream media"?

I think the much more interesting story is "Why do presumably educated and internet savvy Slashdot readers repeatedly believe journalistic garbage that can be debunked with a 30 second Google search?".

Prequel

[Roger W Moore]

Well after this he'll have plenty of great material for a 900-year prequel that will tackle some different, but still very troubling, social issues.

Slow on the take

[just_another_sean]

As if the story itself could not be more horrible I can't believe the books were published in 2011 and 2013 and just now they decide to go after him. Either he pissed off someone high up and they just found a reason to go after the guy or some bored cop just got around to discovering fiction...

Unbelievable!

Re:In Soviet Maryland

[Jason Levine]

The police don't need to act on every tip reported in. If that were the case, they would need to respond to every 911 call that reported that the McDonald's teller gave them a medium fries and not a large like they ordered. You know, because it might possibly become a violent situation and if they don't act they might be to blame.

Even if they did "act" on this tip, all it would warrant might be a visit to the guy's house to talk with him briefly and run some background checks on him. That would have shown that he's a fiction writer and not publishing some manifesto about how he's going to go berserk and kill everyone. Then the author and the police would go their own ways with as little fuss as possible. Forcibly taking him in for "an emergency medical evaluation", not letting anyone know where he is, and releasing statements phrasing everything he did as if he was an imminent threat isn't "acting", it's overreacting. Overreacting never takes down valid threats - at least, not without also taking down a lot of non-threats as well. If they actually, properly "acted", we wouldn't be reading about this because it would have been a routine interview and closing of the report.

Voltaire

[MobyDisk]

It's awesome that his pen name was Voltaer which sounds like a reference to Voltaire who was fighting for civil rights and had his books burned.

It sounds like this guy is brilliant. He was smart enough to use a pen name to hide his writings from his students, and also smart enough to choose a pen name that mocks anyone who uses these writings to defame him. Clearly, Voltaire should now be required reading by Dorchester county students.

Re:In Soviet Maryland

[Zalbik]

you can't necessarily blame the police or the school

Yes I certainly can; people who uphold bad laws are almost as bad as those who enact them.

And more importantly, unless there was evidence that this teacher was posing an immediate threat to children, they had no authority to arrest / detain him, regardless of any potential future litigation.

To put it simply, based on the current description of the situation, it appears the police did something both illegal and immoral and the school board did something immoral and possibly illegal.

Note: Every news story I find on this is pretty vague on the details. I suspect there is more going on here than initially reported. The news agencies have quite possibly left out important and pertinent information as it makes a great click-bait story.

Re:change.org petition

[Shatrat]

Well, there was the Declaration of Independence, but those people followed up the petition with gunfire.

Habeas corpus

[DigitalSorceress]

Seriously, where is he now?

How is it possible for a person to simply disappear and have their whereabouts listed as "known to law enforcement".

IANAL, but it seems to me that someone with standing should file a writ of Habeas corpus because people should not just disappear like this in a first world country.

Re:In Soviet Maryland

[TheCarp]

You are both right and wrong. The police yes....however the DA and Sheriff are often both elected positions, meaning that they do have certain "requirements" if they want to be re-elected, and often respecting civil rights is unpopular with the populace; and a LOT of people are willing to give them a pass for violating rights if they come up with even a flimsy excuse.