Slashdot Mirror
A Post-Columbine Halloween Horror Story
Christopher Beamon, a 13-year-old seventh-grader in Ponder, Texas, was, according to a school administrator, a "disciplinary problem."
He was also, according to a classmate, a little "weird."
Tuesday, Christopher was released after spending nearly a week in the Denton County juvenile correctional facility for writing - at his teacher's request - a fictional Halloween horror story that described the shooting of two classmates and his teacher.
Christopher had become another, particularly dramatic Hellmouth horror story, one more sacrifice to the profoundly ignorant way in which politics, education and the criminal justice system treat complex social issues involving technology, culture and the young.
The teacher gave Beamon a score of 100 on the writing assignment, on which she also wrote "outstanding."
Then, perhaps remembering the ongoing post-Columbine assault in American education on young geeks, nerds, gamers, the weird and the non-normal, she thought better of the grade and his story, and turned Beamon in to the principal.
School officials contacted the local district attorney, Bruce Isaacks. Beamon was taken into custody and brought before Denton County Juvenile Judge Court Darlene Whitten, who ordered the seventh-grader detained for 10 days. Whitten approved Christopher's early release only after the his stunned mother and the family's court-appointed lawyers began contacting Texas reporters.
The district attorney said - regretfully - that he couldn't find any grounds to prosecute Christopher, but managed to brand him on national TV anyway: "It looks like the child was doing what the teacher told him to do, which was to write a scary story" said Isaacks,"but this child does appear to be a persistent discipline problem for this school, and the administrators were legitimately concerned." The DA's subliminal message was obvious. Would Christopher have been hauled off to jail he if was the star quarterback on the high school football team? Not likely.
On his release from jail, Christopher Beamon said "it seems like a year ago, a big ol' long year" since he was first arrested, and asked for a bean burrito from Taco Bell.
Beamon's arrest came just days after the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency (ATF) announced it was joining with a private security firm (see the Slashdot: article) to distribute Mosaic-2000, a software program designed to spot potentially dangerous students in schools.
Beamon's essay, available on the Dallas Morning News website, describes he and a friend fending off an intruder with a .12 gauge shotgun. "this bloody body dropped down in front of us and scared us half to death and about 20 kids started cracking up and pissed me off so I shot Matt, Jake and Ben started laughing so hard that I acssedently [sic} shot Mrs. Henry (his teacher)."
The story is a crude, if classic pre-adolescent fantasy, and is about as menacing as "Daffy Duck." It would seem logical to many adolescent boys that a horror story might include some violence. Check it out for yourself.
Beamon said he read the story aloud in class for extra credit, and the teacher not only gave him a perfect score, but laughed when he read about her accidental shooting. The next day, he was in the local juvenile detention center for suspicion of making "terroristic threats." (Perhaps a bit ingenuously, Beamon told reporters he spent his time in jail reading the Bible).
Last year, in the wake of the Columbine killings, scores of schoolkids, many of them geeks, nerds, gamers, Goths and various assorted oddballs, reported a wave of suspensions, expulsions and forced counseling sessions after they were asked to speak openly about their feelings about school, classmates and cultural values. Many said they regretted speaking frankly about their feelings about school, and wouldn't do it again. They were wise.
A number of kids who said they understand at least some of the rage that might have driven the Columbine killers were sent home or ordered into compulsory counseling and re-education sessions.
What a windfall Columbine has been for timid educational bureaucrats: they don't have to deal with their disaffected students and their problems: they can just ship them off to counseling, private schools or jail.
And what a black mark for journalism, which contributed so mightily to the hysterical atmosphere in which this kind of insanity is possible -- remember the post-Columbine are computer-games-turning-your-kids-into-killers coverage? -- and manages to rarely offer relevent facts or ask any of the right or elemental questions:
Why are schools adopting these increasingly Draconian measures when violence in schools and among the young in general has been dropping sharply for years?
Isn't it better for kids to express their angry, even violent fantasies openly, where parents and educators can see and talk about them? Is it really safer if these feelings are hidden - the real legacy of Columbine and Christopher's nightmare.
Do children have any rights at all to free speech or due process? Do they have any recourse when opinions and stories are solicited by teachers and administrators, then used to punish and silence them?
Free societies have always accepted trade-offs between security and freedom. Urban streets would be a lot safer if nobody was permitted to go outside after 6 p.m., or if thieves and robbers had their hands chopped off. But safety isn't the only value in a democracy.
School killings are horrible, but they are rare. And they aren't as random as media reports would suggest: they invariably involve emotionally-disturbed adolescent white males with access to lethal weapons. Justice department surveys repeatedly have found that schools are the safest places for kids to be.
Awful as they are, these incidents don't justify turning schools into ideological prison camps where informers are encouraged, normalcy is a forced value, and law enforcement authorities are called in to police stories and jokes.
Beamon was asked on the Today Show what he learned from his experience. "Be careful what you say," he said.
Judge Whitten defended her decision to the Dallas Morning News: "I do want people to understand that, just like making a threat at an airport, a threat in a school situation is very serious, even if it was in jest."
Another grisly Columbine legacy: judges ruling on adolescent humor, deciding which jokes are acceptable, and which constitute terroristic threats. In Millenial America, fantasizing about fending off intruders with shotguns or offing your teacher is now a felony.
Judge Whitten reflected contemporary educational as well as law-enforcement thinking about oddball, individualistic thinking and offensive humor: it ought to be a crime, along with anger. Thus Beamon might have suffered the same fate if he quoted from any given character on the geek-loved "South Park." Beamon was lucky he wasn't a gamer playing "Doom:" he'd probably still be in jail.
For geek and nerd kids, this issue has special relevance, since they are prone to disliking school and are often angered by exclusion, harassment, and a widening gap between their often-Net inspired values, and the all-too often-oppressive 19th century educational system many have to endure. They are also nearly addicted to offensive humor.
The alienated and the weird are not only frustrated, but are now all potential killers as well. The price of being different only goes up.
The post-Columbine message was clear enough, even for a seventh-grader like Christopher: watch what you say, or safer yet, don't speak at all.
I've noted a few arguments appearing multiple times in these comments, so I decided to summarize my opinions about them.
Argument: This is no different than getting arrested for joking about a bomb in an airport, or yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
Counter: no, this is completely different. to make the situations analogous, please have the airport host a horror story reading, with free airfare for those who read a horror story. or on a more realistic level, see how much trouble you get in for writing a novel with a plotline similar to 'passenger 57' or such.
argument: jake baker got dismissed from university for written stories, so we're hypocritical to argue just because he's younger.
counter: jake baker got dismissed from university, but the charges against him were dismissed. while i found the story itself rather revolting, i fully support the rights of these people to write them.
argument: school officials were just being careful, and it's a neccessary evil.
counter: no, this one is just flat wrong. yes, we live in an overly litigious society, but it doesn't excuse suppression of liberty for "safety". I agree that this is tantamount to thoughtcrime. When I was in high school I wrote a story about a student climbing a tower with a gun and wiping out a ton of people. It wasn't serious, it was a story. Heck, I didn't even have fantasies about doing it, I just decided that 'avenue' and 'boy scout stew' were good rhymes and off I went. note: years later I ran into the teacher I handed that paper to, and she asked for a copy of it. She wanted to use it for a creative writing class as an example of 'black humour' and deriving humour by combining incompatible elements (a very happy, rhythmic flow and well.. a story about a sniper in a clock tower)
Argument: he should be forced to have counseling.
counter: why? should we all go for "re-education" whenever we say something outside the norm? this is similar to all the jokes in my current office about 'sensitivity training'. 99% of all people who say weird stuff are kidding or saying it purely for shock value. he might need counseling, he might not. none of us here have nearly enough information to make that call.
Argument: the paper didn't deserve 100%
counter: well... perhaps you're right... but perhaps the teacher was trying to get the students to do something for themselves, to get them to realize that perhaps they like writing creatively but without the pressure of grades and such.
Oh, what a time we live in. I think I'm going to go watch Heathers.
First off, let me say that I think the "system" probably made a mistake in this case. But I would like to take a second to answer many /.'ers false assumptions regarding the right to Free Speech.
/is/ profiling. But there I'm not aware of any legal or moral reason that it shouldn't be done.
You see, according to long judicial precedent, the right to free speech does not mean being free from the consequences of what you say. It frees you to say it. After you say it, you can be held accountable for the content of what you said. So, if you (to use the classic example) shout "fire!" in a crowded theater, you can be held accountable for the damage done. Your right to free speech does not include this.
You can also be held accountable for using "fighting words" or other things designed to incite people to criminal action. And treason and sedition are still crimes, as is espionage. You are not permitted to divulge legitimate state secrets without consequence. Unfortunately, this approach to free speech (the only rational one in my opinion) has been eroded by a lot of people who want to be able to say or do anything without consequence. So far, the courts have not bought in in most cases. I hope they continue to hold out.
In any case, I don't think that there is any natural right to speak without consequences. The logical extremes of this idea are absurd and untenable. Do you really want someone who says "I'm going to kill Bill Clinton" to be free from any questioning?
In this case, a kid wrote an essay that was genuinely disturbing. While throwing him in jail may have been a bit much, I think asking him about it, counseling him for it, etc. were entirely appropriate! I'm sorry, but any kid who writes something this graphic (have you read it?) is very likely to have a problem. The school system would be derelict to not inquire -- and yes, this
Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending public schools. In fact, I am a staunch advocate of home schooling. But in this case I think that they are doing the best they can with what they've got.
-- Slashdot sucks.
| Any grade 7 should be able to write better than
;) ]
| that. It really makes me worry about schools
| today.
Back when I was in high school (class of '90), I was the editor of the school's literary magazine. I've seen writing as bad as that from juniors (who were apparently proud enough of their work to submit it to the literary magazine - it wasn't a requirement!) As a graduate student, I've taught a number of freshman-level chemistry labs. I've gotten lab reports from students that were written as poorly as this seventh grader's essay. I guess what I'm saying here is that schools "today" have been as bad for at least the past ten years.
Should the kid have been arrested for writing this essay? Heck no. Should the kid have been given a perfect score on it? Hell no! The first sentence alone would have made *my* seventh grade teacher give the thing an "F". Honestly, it sounds like the kid did a little too *much* "freeon" before class that day.
Having said all of this, I feel a little sorry for the kid because I put one of *my* short stories into my school's literary magazine. This story was about an abused child who ends up shooting his parents. I wasn't an abused child and I had no intention of shooting my parents, but I *was* questioned about the story at length.
This happened even though the story was written in third person and used no "real" names. It's a good thing that Columbine hadn't happened then, or I might have been put in jail!
[PS - No grammar flames about this post, please. Slashdot ain't no literary magazine!
-- Rick
I remember a few of years ago, a student named Jake Baker at the University of Michigan wrote piece of erotic fiction on USENET (alt.sex.stories?) that described acts of rape, sexual torture, and murder of a classmate, who was mentioned by name.
He had prepended a disclaimer to his work (mentioning that it contained "lots of sick stuff") and he put his real name on the postings.
When the University was informed of the postings from an alumnus who is an attorney in Moscow (!!!), he was dismissed from the University. The 6th Circuit court of appeals affirmed the dismissal.
Now... the case that Jon sites is different in that this was schoolwork that the 7th grader wrote, but the similarity was that people were mentioned by name.
I agree with Jon's sentiments that students should have freedom of speech and press (which applies here? I'm not a lawyer.). However, the University of Michigan case is a precedent that has already undergone appeal in federal court that states that such writings COULD and ARE considered threatening.
Jake's story was posted to one of the alt.sex groups in early 1995. This was way before the Columbine killings. Instead of seeing an increased panic among school administrators, I see continuity from what they were doing four years ago.
Now... I do not for one minute believe that either Christopher Beamon or Jake Baker meant to threaten anybody by their writings. However, there is still a precedent that considers these writings as threatening and should be punished.
For this reason, I think Jon is jumping the gun here in saying that this has anything to do with the Columbine shootings or the perceived "anti-geek" attitudes that were mentioned in the previous "Hellmouth" stories.
Maybe, just maybe, those shootings made school administrators more willing to take quick action.
Nevertheless, I do not agree with the disposition of either Jake Baker's case, nor with Chris Beamon's.
I think that if schools are going to prosecute people for such things, then there should be a clear policy explained to all the students; the ground rules must be made clear if we are to try to avoid such things that may upset other students or their parents. If a school has such rules, they should be published and placed under the scrutiny of the public. If they are too draconian, allow them to be challenged by the parents, teachers, or students... even the ACLU.
Otherwise, I can see this being a precedent for yet another case, where a five year old says to another student "Come back here! I'll kill you!" and gets expelled.
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
I must be getting old. How can a seventh grader be praised for a story with such horrible grammar, spelling, and structure? Sure, it was creative. Sure, it was scary. But even in this email-driven, post-modern age, there are still some rules for well-formed written English.
The teacher ought to be forced to read Strunk & White. The kids ought to be assigned to each memorize a chapter. Yikes.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Something's not right here, as several have pointed out. A crappy essay receives a 100% "outstanding" grade. (This might be adequately explained by lowered standards in school, but still, 100+%?) Being asked to read it aloud in class, then being sent to jail for a week? Why would a teacher send the student to jail if the essay was so good? Laughing at the portrayal of the death of a teacher?
Hypothesis One: The teacher was genuinely amused, and a student who was in the class and heard it read aloud reported it to higher authorities.
To corroborate this theory, wait to see if that teacher faces disciplinary action for "encouraging" violent threats.
Hypothesis Two: If you're paranoid, you'll love this. The teacher was disturbed by the contents of the note. To play along with and placate the student, she gives him the best possible grade and overacts her enjoyment of the story. She then later turns him in, after he's left.
If this is the case, the teacher will not face disciplanary action, and will probably be held up as an example of how to act under these circumstances in the educational circles.
Does anyone have anything to add to resolve these apparent inconsistencies?
First off, he probably shouldn't have got 100, but perhaps the true brillance was in the reading of it, okay people? Interpretation is everything... :-)
:-)
Stories like this anger me, because it causes me to recall back to my high school days, just under a decade ago..
Mainly, however, it reminds me of a story..
<rant>
My sister is diabetic. We discovered this maybe three or four years ago. She has to take two shots per day. No problem.
Except, the idiot people at the school won't allow her to bring a needle to school. Fir enough, easy compromise we suggest, keep the needles and insulin in the nurse's office, so she can come there to take her shot. Many kids did this when I was a child (this is 7th grade, BTW).
School's response? No, we can't do that because if some other kid wandered in and shot themselves full of insulin, we'd be liable... WTF!?!?!? The stuff is in a locked cabinet, in a locked room behind the principals office, which has two people in it at all times. They must be joking right?
Not at all. In fact, they wouldn't even allow her to take her shots ON SCHOOL PROPERTY because then they could be held as encouraging DRUG ABUSE! Can you believe it? I sat there with my mother as the principal spouted this nonsense off. I almost hit him.
He convieniently ignored the fact that without the shots, my sister would probably die. It was all we could do to get him to allow her out of classes to take the shots. Even then, she had to go out to the PARKING LOT where my mom had to be waiting in the car with her medication and blood-sugar testing equipment. Needless to say, they moved away from there soon after, but I still say we should have sued their asses.
Remember, this whole story is pre-Columbine. The point is that schools are now so concerned about liability, esp. after the shootings and so forth, that all forms of common sense in the school system has been lost. NOBODY, not the principal, not the superintendant, no-one, is allowed to use their brain in any form whatsoever, because they fear that they'll be accountable if something happens down the road.
And that of course is the problem. Brainless droids mindlessly implementing a policy that's open to interpretation. Ever read those "zero-tolerance" policies? You could get expelled for a year for having a single aspirin at some schools. Seriously.
The fact is that when any policy gets implemented with NO exceptions, you get some unfair occurances. Sometimes extremely unfair, esp. in the public school system.
What's really sad is that a lot of the policies are downright illegal. Many take away the kids rights (yes, kids have rights too) without informing the parent, informing the kid, or informing the state. If any parent actually read these things, they'd disagree with many.
But how many people would take a school to court over these policies, until it directly affected their child? Few. Damn few.
These are PUBLIC schools. The public should decide these things, true, but they must be WITHIN THE LAW. That's all I ask. If a child can have an aspirin outside the school, he should be able to have one inside the school.
</rant>
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The teacher gave Beamon a score of 100 on the writing assignment, on which she also wrote "outstanding."
Then, perhaps remembering the ongoing post-Columbine assault... [snip largely-irrelevant bit about who the assault is directed at, as that shouldn't matter. It's wrong, regardless of who it's targeting] she thought better of the grade and his story, and turned Beamon in to the principal.
Here's where this really gets sinister. Turning him in to the principal was the entirely wrong thing to do. Turning him in to (or just asking him to visit with) a school guidance counselor would be far more beneficial.
It's the counselor's business to determine who in the school is sufficiently disturbed to really do something destructive to themselves, others, or school property, and who is just being normal (or even harmlessly abnormal) for an adolescent. At least that's what counselors did when I was a student, lo these many years ago.
The counselor, who should be more qualified than the principal in these matters, can then determine whether the police need to get involved.
Calling in the police in this case was even more wrong-headed than calling in the principal. This kid wrote a paper ferchissakes. He didn't detonate a bomb, come to school drunk or high, or assault other students. Those are the kinds of things that principals and police need to put a stop to - not creative writing, however violent or poorly spelled it is.
First of ....DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ. Sheesh.. second of all... DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHNG YOU SEE ON THE TV NEWS...
All it takes is some "news story" from Podunk USA about some poor little innocent boy wrongly imprisoned blah blah blah... and people jump on the "This is wrong"..."Our rights are being infringed upon" "blah blah blah" bandwagon.
You don't know the facts.. you know what the oportunistic sensationalistic media has presented.
It might be accurate, it might not be. Sheesh. Why do we just love to believe the absolute worst.
just because one of his kids liked to draw belly buttons on her pictures
/can/ be analysed by psychologists and are used in (particualrly primary) schools for spotting early signs of abuse at home. But at least we realise that it's only a sign, I think that's where a difference comes in.
/her/ fault.
... invariably involve emotionally-disturbed adolescent white males with access to lethal weapons.", on racist grounds. There is *no* racial prerogative for school attacks / killings.
Apparently, over here in the UK, kids' drawings
The problem with (post-) Columbine reactions is the f*cking LUDICROUS escalation from one kid's story to national newspaper and jail, etc. If the teacher requests "a scary story" then the results are
There is a sizeable inconsistency between the implied age where someone would write a horror story that scares the establishment IRL, and someone who can still get 100% for putting obscenities and misspelling stuff in the story - I mean, "pissed off" pisses me off, "acssedently" would be permissible younger than required for it to be scary, IMO.
I object to the idea that "School killings
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Putting a child in jail for writing a story.
That's not simple? Not simply wrong? CYA does not make its o.k. to put people in jail for writing fiction. But, but, but, the liability..fsck the liability.
Suddenly, this teacher would lose her job for not doing anything after such an obvious threat.
How about for overreacting to the nth degreee. Would a parent/teacher sitdown and talk meeting have accomplished much more. Panic is the downfall of sentient species. The teacher, principal and judge, all panicked (sp).
+&x
is neatly expressed in this letter to the editor of the Dallas Morning News.
See second letter - Horror story
It seems that Katz bashing is a favorite pasttime in this forum and I sincerely hope that this article does not become another open license for attack on Katz. There is quite a bit of the Pavlovian, knee-jerk, vitriol that makes its way into this forum and it really needs to stop.
Katz should not be above criticism, of course, but the type of comments that are usually directed his way are very personal and tasteless.
Someone pointed to an article that had a picture of Katz and contained a brief blurb on him. You know what? The guy is human. He is married and has a wife, daughter and two dogs. He lives in North Jersey, which is my neck of the woods, and is really no different than me or you. He just happens to be someone who writes for a living and whose topics are usually complex and controversial. He is not above interjecting his opinions because he is not a newspaper reporter; he is a writer who writes about issues that concern him.
Just remember, his daughter might be reading the comments about him.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
What upsets me the most about this whole ordeal is that right now, kids are learning to keep quiet.
Many said they regretted speaking frankly about their feelings about school, and wouldn't do it again. They were wise.
So here you have teachers and councilers trying to get kids to open up, and then they turn righ around and suspend them. That is so incredibly assinine. It seems like a place of learning should know that punishment is not the best solution. I am sure some of these kids will never open their mouths again when it comes to their personal feelings.
How do you feel about the Columbine murders?
Well, to be honest, I can sorta identify with how the kids who did the killing felt.
So in this case, the obvious solution would be to suspend the student. He will certainly know better in the future to ever think that!
Great fucking solution.
I think it's more of a crime that the kid got a "100" on such a horribly written essay.
:wq