Posted on 01/30/2011 4:48:40 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Spotsylvania, Va., high school freshman Andrew Mikel has been suspended for the school year and has been placed in a "diversion program" by police for blowing soft plastic pellets through a pen at three classmates.
"I am currently working with the Rutherford Institute, fighting the insane madness of our local school administration and board," wrote the boy's father, also named Andrew Mikel, to WND.
"In early December, my son shot what amounts to a spitwad. They classified the spit wad as a weapon, expelled my son from school the rest of the year, filed assault charges on him with the sheriff's department, mandated that he take 'substance-abuse counseling' and 'anger-management counseling' and must do 24 hours of community service."
Originally suspended for 10 days after the Dec. 10 incident, Andrew later was suspended for the balance of the school year following a Dec. 21 hearing before the Spotsylvania County school board. His criminal charges will be expunged if he completes the diversion program for first-time offenders.
"The school board feels that they gave the child and his father a fair hearing and handled the situation appropriately," said Mark Cole, a Spotsylvania delegate to the Virginia general assembly. He intervened with the school board and sheriff's department on the boy's behalf. "They said that if the child hit someone in the eye it could have damaged their eye. They suspended the child for the rest of the school year, which I think is excessive."
Want to know what's ailing American education? Read "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools" by Bruce Shortt.
"We were able to present our side, that the punishment doesn't fit the student code of conduct," said Mikel's legal counsel, Andrew Flusche. "In my opinion they have shoehorned in this definition of weapon that triggers harsher punishment."
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Believe it or not I support the school district for their actions.
I have substituted in middle school classrooms with boys that shoot spitwads and folded paper with rubber bands and, let me tell you, from personal experience it is NOT fun. It really IS dangerous. I’ve had them fly by my face within inches of my eyes. It is impossible to teach the lesson with this going on and don’t even think about turning your back to get something or write on the board. They leave a mess around the room on the floor and counters. And the worst part is these little jerks are hard to catch because they’re firing from a room of 25 kids and you don’t always see where it comes from. They hide their pen and rubber bands in their pockets and lie to you when you confront them. And when I do catch one of them I am LIVID and have to contain myself not to scream at them.
Not a good situation.
So I don’t have a problem with these little sh@#$ getting suspended, especially when they’ve been previously warned.
Way back, when both male and female teachers would “rip your ass off” with a paddle right there in the classroom, we were very careful not to shoot these “dangerous” weapons at the teacher because if he/she found out who did it, certain pain “attitude adjustment” would surely follow as sure as the sun rise in the morning.
Now, thanks to you and everyone else in the teaching profession who coddle our little rascals (and I was one) they are not afraid of you and now you reap the rewards of being sensitive, caring, politically correct, diverse and supportive of the entire agenda of our school system that has the goal of indoctrination instead of education and discipline.
The next time one of those little “cherubs” shoots you with a paper clip or wad, just think back in the 50’s and 60’s you could actually do something about it and teach the culprit that bad behavior begets pain.
There's very little in the actual news about this story, which is pretty local for me, just down I-95 a bit.
That may have been written by his father, also named Andrew Mikel.
His father, assuming I’ve got the same guy, and I’m guessing yes because it would explain the WND connection and getting the Rutherford institute involved, is active in the Tea Party movement. His name appears on a lawsuit regarding a petition drive last year where a candidate he backed was rejected.
So this could be a bit of retaliation (the severity of the punishment). The problem is that the behavior was clearly inappropriate and deserving of punishment. Once you cross that line, your arguments become a lot more difficult.
I’ve been trying to find a better explanation of the projectiles. They sound to me like AirSoft pellets, and a picture I saw of them LOOKED like AirSoft pellets, but another description sounded like they were NOT, (too foamy and flimsy).
As a kid, we show rolled-up paper with rubber bands, sometimes with paper clips embedded — they would put holes in the suspended ceilings if you used multiple rubber bands. We deserved to be punished, but that was a different time. (Some just shot the paper clips, which was just cruel).
When I went to a summer job, the guys would shoot 10-gauge solid copper shielded wire with rubber bands, until they put a dent in a cabinet and punched a hole in an overhead light fixture cover one day.
Anyway, I prefer to use “zero-tolerance” stories when there was no real violation of any rules, because it’s easier to argue the point — with a story like this, a significant number of people will relate to being shot like this, and not be persuaded that punishment was wrong.
Nice!
“spit wads” This was not a spit wad. I don’t believe in zero tolerance, but to try and equate this to a simple spit ball is unbelievable.
The 10 day OSS should have been a suitable punishment, detention? NO WAY! This offense was definitely worth more than a visit to a classroom to sleep.
If we’re going to write articles that mean something, let’s be fair, not one sided.
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