Massachusetts School Bans Tag Amid Fears of Injuries, Lawsuits

FOXNEWS.COM HOME > U.S. ^ | Wednesday, October 18, 2006 | AP

[Clint N. Suhks]

ATTLEBORO, Mass. — Tag, you're out!

Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.

While there is no districtwide ban on contact sports during recess, local rules have been cropping up. Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.

Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

[Blue Scourge]

Not going to lie...I thought of the body spray at first....lol

[Clint N. Suhks]

Massachusetts, what a surprise.

[Clint N. Suhks]

That stuff sticks.

[Mo1]

Guess Tort Reform never crossed their minds, huh?

Lets just banned kids from getting any kind of exercise from running around

And then complain when they are all over weight

[Smokin' Joe]

And then they will wonder why the kids will be climbing the walls with unburned energy....and dope 'em up.

Besides, how else is the fat kid going to learn how to run fast...

[RedRightReturn]

"And then complain when they are all over weight"

And let's not even talk about unruly and lacking in social skills.

This is going on at my kids' school too. It's absolutely absurd how they insulted our intelligence by telling us it was for the childrens' safety!

No one is more pi$$ed than the kids!!

[happilymarriedmom]

Maybe they'll be safer, but will they fatter? I thought obesity was the most dangerous thing affecting our kids today. Now kids can't even run on the playground because they might skin a knee. I wonder if there were more Dads involved in PTA if there would be this banning of all "ball" sports.

[HEY4QDEMS]

Normally I blame schools for stupid policy decisions but in this case, I have to blame lawyers.

[Ready4Freddy]

Related article - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1721546/posts

[MAD-AS-HELL]

Is it still legal to play tag the fag in Mass? /s

[EagleUSA]

Who said this country has not lost control of its judicial processes?? Frivolous law? Naw.....and who benefits? Yes, the people who have fostered it, and support it -- the lawyers and the courts.....

Well even the Clintons, Bonnie and Clyde, knew the judiciary was the only was to move for absolute power...they tried, did a pretty good job of redesigning the federal system with their stooges.....always keep an eye on the judiciary....and the Congress for that matter.

[WorkerbeeCitizen]

Any activity in which there will be winners and losers will be banned.

[RedCell]

Me too. What next? A claim of someone having cooties will bring about a lawsuit?

Ah... this just in. As I'm posting this, I wanted to do some quick research on cooties before hitting the commit button and I just found this entry in Wikipedia. Funny how everything comes full circle:

Another standard cure is to transmit the cooties to someone else. This etiology has found its way into games of tag, which are occasionally described in terms of spreading cooties.

So there you have it. By outlawing tag, you remove the ability to heal yourself from cooties! What will the CDC and WHO have to say about that?! ;-)

[Clint N. Suhks]

The PC elementary school Clint Jr. went to they had to play "Tag the opposite gender".

[Rakkasan1]

wonder when they'll ban teachers lest they molest...
(said not in jest)

[johnny7]

“Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe”

And I bet Gaylene... can snug a condom on a cucumber like nobody's business.

[New Perspective]

Is it still legal to play tag the fag in Mass? /s

Having spent a few years growing in California we used to play Smear the Queer at recess. Just pick up the ball and don't get tackled. What fun and when the bell rang to go back to class we were definately ready to just sit down and listen.

[Republican Red]

A few years ago, my daughter broke her arm playing on the monkey bars during school recess. It was actually the second broken arm in her particular 2nd grade class on that particular piece of equiptment within a month. I didn't know those facts at the time but even now still consider it an accident.

For days I had calls from the school board, the principal and the teacher telling me how concerned they were for my daughter and offering any help they could. When I told the principal that I was not taking legal action the phone calls of concern stopped.

[geezerwheezer]

Yep, this is a great idea. We had over 2,763 deaths last year from kids playing tag, 87,456 from kids playing touch football, 22,392 from playing kickball, and over 367,945 from cutting paper and ribbons on art projects! What bulls*** will they come up with next? Someone needs to fire a school principal for sheer stupidity.