Posted on 10/09/2009 7:48:04 AM PDT by ReagansRaiders
Soldier suspended from school Posted: Oct 8, 2009 05:26 PM
A NEWS10 EXCLUSIVE By MARK O'BRIEN
LANSINGBURGH -- High school senior Matthew Whalen is the kind of student any parent would want.
He's an Eagle Scout, on the honor roll, taking Advanced Placement classes, and never been in trouble with the law. He's received commendations from the City of Troy and the Boy Scouts of America for saving a woman's life, and this past summer, he completed Army basic training. All of it was accomplished before the age of 17.
"I'm just trying to do what I can while I can," Matthew says.
His goal is to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a dream since he was in grade school.
"I have a first-grade yearbook that says I want to be driving tanks in the Army," Matthew says. "I mean, this is something that I know I've always wanted to do."
But the dream could be in jeopardy, thanks to a two-inch pocket knife that officials at Lansingburgh Senior High School found in Matthew's locked car last month. The pocket knife was a gift from his grandfather, Robert Whalen, who's the Hoosick Falls Police Chief. Matthew says he kept the knife in a side compartment and never tried showing it off or threatening anyone with it. Instead it was a part of the survival kit that was his car.
"My car is designed in a way that if I ever broke down, I'd be OK," Whalen explains. "I have a sleeping bag. I have bottled water. I have an MRE. I believe it's better to be prepared and not need it than need it and not have it."
Matthew says school officials approached him on Sept. 21, asking if he had a weapon on him. When Matthew answered he did not, he says the officials asked if he had a knife in his car. Matthew said it was a pocket knife, and took officials to his car when asked. He also turned over the pocket knife when asked.
The Lansingburgh Central School District has a zero-tolerance policy on weapons. According to the district's Codes of Conduct, students are not allowed to have "a weapon of any kind" on school grounds. Even though a pocket knife is not considered a weapon under New York State penal code, the district also prohibits students from possessing anything "that reasonably can be considered a weapon."
According to Matthew, the school suspended him for five days, during which time a Superintendent's hearing was held to determine the extent of his punishment. Matthew's family contends only the high school's principal and athletic director were present, not the Superintendent or the assistant principal who initially suspended Matthew. And despite a letter from Matthew's Scout Master explaining how a pocket knife is a common tool for scouts to have, the district suspended Matthew for another 15 days. The Whalens say they received no explanation as to why, and they claim there was no opportunity to ask.
"I want him to have fair treatment based on his character," says Matthew's father, Bryan Whalen. "It just totally baffles me that they would go after this when they have much bigger fish to fry."
The Whalens say during the Superintendent's hearing, officials admitted that Matthew cooperated fully, didn't have the pocket knife on him, had no intention of using it, and never threatened anyone with it. "They'd already made their decision," Whalen's father says.
In a statement to NEWS10, Superintendent George J. Goodwin says, "We do not comment on discipline related to an individual student. Our policies are clear that weapons are not permitted on school premises and subject to disciplinary consequences."
Legal expert Thomas Carr, of Tully Rinckey PLLC, says school districts are within their rights to impose and enforce safety policies, even if a pocket knife is not considered a weapon under New York State penal law. But he also says such school rules can quickly become so-called "gray areas" that leave the meaning of what's considered a weapon open ended.
"If this 17-year-old is driving his car to school," Carr says, "let's face it, the tire iron in the trunk to change the wheel is much more of a deadly weapon than a one-and-a-half inch blade knife."
Carr also says the Whalens might have grounds to pursue legal action against the district if Matthew felt he had no choice but to allow school officials to search his car.
At this point, the Whalens are not sure when or if they will sue the district. Instead, they want the district to reinstate Matthew immediately and remove this from his official student record.
"He needs to be doing the application for his admission to West Point right now," Bryan Whalen says. "They're delaying that, and that could be very costly for him."
Matthew says he wants to follow in the military footsteps of his father and grandfather. His grandfather, Robert Whalen, received two Purple Hearts for his service in the Vietnam War. Bryan Whalen served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and at Ground Zero, as his unit was on the scene by the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. He's also received the Soldier's Medal from the U.S. Army, and he pulled survivors from a burning helicopter that had crashed at the Stratton Air National Guard Base during an air show crash in 1991.
Matthew guesses a student must have told school officials, but he doesn't know who did it or why. His father thinks it might have been a prank to see Matthew get a little heat from administrators and that the intent was for it to never get this far.
"It's just plain wrong of what they've done," he says. "It isn't a weapon!"
But the family feels the district overreacted, if not for suspending Matthew in the first place, then for adding an additional 15 days to the original suspension.
"If they had told me, 'Take this out of your car,' I would have said alright, and it never would have been an issue," Matthew says. "I was upset with it, but I can understand that. They have the zero-tolerance rule."
The district provides a tutor for Matthew for 90 minutes every day; he's banned from stepping on school grounds for any reason whatsoever, including assignments and sporting events. Matthew says it's hard to cram more than six hours of work into his tutor time, and he says his work is not being graded until he returns to school. All he wants is to return to class.
"The rest of my life could be affected by this," he says.
Let’s look at this from the outrageous point of view of the stupid school administrators:
Kids have hands. Hands can be made into fists. Fists can injure and even kill. They should ban kids who have hands from school.
Its about the same mentality.
I grew up in the area (Loudonville) and this is complete nonsense. These people need to get a life. I am a cop. Would they stop me from carrying on school grounds? They would probably try.
Seems like these could all be at least as dangerous: scissors, pens, fingernail clippers, tweezers, keys, large paper clips.
Thanks for sharing this story. This is ridiculous! Will pray that sanity prevails somewhere in his path to help propel him to his noble goals.
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but think I’d *want* to be suspended from any school insane enough to suspend someone for a pocket knife left in a locked car
Oh but clearly this sort of oppression is all Bush’s fault. OK enough sarcasm.
Somehow the kids caught in that horrible Chicago killing video managed to slip through the cracks. Here you have a perfectly good student who makes a very minor mistake and he is severely punished. What lunacy.
Yes, it is insane. The pukes need to be run out of town. At a minimum. Seriously, they are worthless pieces of cr@p.
Sounds like it is time to lawyer up and make their lives H#ll. For starters. Get LOTS of press coverage, too. Make them national laughing stocks. Email Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly, et al. Ruin their lives as they are in their stupidity trying to ruin your godson’s.
The point was initially that somebody was trying to do something to combat threatening behavior. It very quickly deteriorated into, “I don’t want to be responsible for deciding whether a pocket knife is the same as a samurai sword, so we’ll just ban everything no matter what the item is or the reason is for it being there.” Now it’s a combination of power and cowardice on the part of administrators that gets kids like Matthew in trouble.
And you’ll notice the little quotey marks around “good idea” in my post.
Colonel, USAFR
Wow. If they didn’t like the little 2” pocket knife in his survuval kit, then they would have had heart attacks over the SOG Fusion tomahawk, the SIG 229 and the Oly Arms CAR 15 I keep in my vehicle’s 72 hour survival kit.
Just curious...how did they even know he had the knife in his car? That fact is unclear to me...
I think it is time for someone to file a flurry of frivolous lawsuits against the school administrators who are involved in this. Make them defend it. Make someone pay to defend it. Burn up their time. Stress them out. STRIKE BACK!
And furthermore, the reporter should know that “alright” is not a word. It should be all right. Though standards have become so lax that is almost accepted now.
I hope the media attention to this case though will lead to a public outcry and an overturning of the kid’s suspension.
The car he drove is far more dangerous and could be used as a weapon more deadly than a gun if he chose to do it.
Intent HAS to be included in these cases, this is nothing more than a cop-out by school officials so that questions of race and favoritism can’t be used against their decisions.
I hope West Point overlooks this and recognizes it for what it really is if he has a shot to get in there.
Private schooling or homeschooling would have prevented this.
Your family made the mistake of assuming the Marxist government bureaucrats, Marxist teachers' union, and government it's self were not malevolent entities, with the goal of tyrannical control over, well, everybody. Understand that, and the bureaucrats actions are logical and predictable.
You may be able to mitigate this by removing the boy from the evil system, and educating him privately.
Liberals getting even with a kid they don’t like.
This is no accident. The friggin’ educrat time servers hate kids like this. Someone was looking for a pretext to screw him. I hope USMA@WP sloughs this off as sham that it is.
Set up a legal defense fund and sue the school officials.
My kid, who isn’t that old, was allowed to carry a gun to high school during hunting season. It was a very peaceful school.
As a mother of a recently awarded Eagle Scout, I find this offensive and infuriating. Eagle Scouts aren’t perfect, but they have achieved more than the average teenage boy and represent everything that has made this country great. Of course we all know liberals hate that sort of thing. This is disgusting.
Damn right, need to publicize this as much as possible. What a bunch of control freak idiots. I’m sure that all the other problems at this school have been solved if they have the time to zero in on a stupid pen knife. They would have expelled a peach pit if they searched my car in high school.
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