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Posted on 05/20/2010 1:05:26 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Matthew Whalen's suspension will stand.
On Wednesday night, the Lansingburgh Central School District board of education rejected Whalen's appeal of the punishment and decided not to expunge the blemish on the record of the Eagle Scout suspended for having a pocketknife in his car while the vehicle was on the grounds of Lansingburgh High School. Whalen received a 20-day suspension in September after he turned over to school administrators a 1 1/2-inch knife that he kept in his glove box as part of a car survival kit. He returned to school in October.
Whalen has said he does not know how school officials learned he had a pocketknife in his car, but suspects another student may have tipped off administrators in an attempt to pull a prank on him.
School officials, who did not respond to requests for comment, have said Whalen violated the school district's zero-tolerance policy because he brought a weapon on to school grounds and that the suspension was an appropriate response. The case raised national furor when Whalen went on two separate national Fox News programs to discuss the penalty. He worried that the action could hurt his chances of getting into West Point.
He said he never realized the school considered the keychain knife a weapon. He said his grandfather Robert Whalen -- who recently retired as police chief of the Hoosic Falls Police Department -- gave him the folding knife to use in his car after they used it to cut wires while installing a car radio.
Whalen was given a Lifesaving Heroism Award by the Boy Scouts of America at age 13 after he performed CPR on his aunt, saving her life. He said he carries water bottles, a sleeping bag and a change of clothes in his 1999 Mercury Sable in case it breaks down. He considered the key-chain knife part of that preparedness kit.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/ASPStories/story.asp?StoryID=868106#ixzz0oVBJ25GX
Then I sure hope someone ELSE will be along any minute, otherwise I'm SOL...:-(
Utter lunacy.
Someone needs to anonymously report the Superintendent for having a deadly weapon in his car.
Tire irons have been used in more homicides than a 1 1/2 blade knife.
They are deadly weapons and should not be allowed on school property.
It was in New York in LANSINGBURGH.
I am sure one of his two Senators in that state will still give him a West Point appointment after all they are.....
opps, better wait a minute.
If I remember right when this came out, some reporter that was a bit more intrepid than others called admissions at West Point to ask this question.
The answer, roughly, was "Hell no, we don't care. We've got bigger fish to fry than some charge trumped up by a nosybody administrator."
If this kid doesn't get in, it won't be because of this situation.
Amazing. Hopefully being persecuted like this will wake this kid up politically (if he isn’t already politically awake).
2+2=5.
Well, I guess I was right. It wasn’t in America.
The way things are going, America will be a state of mind, not a country anymore anyway.
The spectacle created by that dwarf from Mexico City on the floor of Congress along with that fawning Marxist Muslim in the Whaite House pretty much shows that.
The mind of the Libtard is a difficult thing to understand; because thier method of processing data is akin to watching a cow chew it’s cud. Slow, mechanized and easily distracted.
Consider, 9/11 would NOT have happened if the FAA had stated that passengers were allowed to bring their pocketknives with them. When you have a plane full of armed passengers, a terrorist with a box-cutter is going to get his throat cut by a fellow passenger who says “Not on MY watch”.
What do you expect from idiots whose main concern is to protect their career?
Yes
Gunner
His crime is being an Eagle Scout.
Zero tolerance means just that. Complete stops at stop signs. 35mph in a 35 zone...not 36 or 37. And all of the equipment on their car had best be in A+ operational order.
Just sayin'. Not that I'd impose undue restrictions on a specific segment of the population just for their beliefs, however foolish and misguided they are. I'd just strictly enforce the laws that are on the books for a certain set of people. That's all. :-)
I find posts this very funny. My son attended a private school where every young man carried a knife some were pocket knives some were worn on the belt. It was sort of a status symbol. It was never a problem. I’m not talking about a 1 1/2 inch knife either. I’m talking about the “Now, this is a knife...” kind. The guys took very seriously the responsibility of having such a weapon.
Why can these admistrators not look at the situation and apply some common sense? Don’t they have any real authority?
If I were the adminstrator and knew the kid, my reaction would be something like. “Just see that it stays in the golve box.” End of issue.
Too many administrators! It’s like DC; too many staffers that have little to do but to play tin god.
I bet if he used his fingers to simulate firing a gun he would also get expelled. Zero tolerance policy on guns ya know!
I used to take a shotgun and hunting cloths to school and then a couple of us and our Biology teacher would go bird hunting after classes.
My old Junior High had a shooting range located under the school pool. We used to have shooting classes after school and have competitions using 22LR.
I think the leftist school apparatchiks collective heads would explode if those things still happened today.
As an aside: school violence was nearly nonexistent back then.
“The purpose of Zero-Tolerance is to pretend that a kid like this is the same as a gang-banger.”
Exactly. Many’s the PTA and local school board meeting I attended where the mantra was “the rules have to be the same for the ‘good’ kids as the ‘bad’ kids.” It gave all the educrats cover and left them never, ever having to use that old fashioned thing called judgment.
What if this Eagle Scout had later died because he needed that knife which he had surrendered? What would the school board say then? Would they have expunged his record then?
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