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posted by martyb on Friday August 29 2014, @12:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the was-the-dinosaur-purple? dept.

WCSC reported that a South Carolina High School student was arrested and suspended after writing about killing a dinosaur using a gun in a class assignment. Attorney David Aylor, who is representing 16-year-old Alex Stone, said his client's arrest over a creative writing assignment was "completely absurd," and is seeking to appeal the suspension. "Students were asked to write about themselves and a creative Facebook status update – just days into the new school year – and my client was arrested and suspended after a school assignment."

Stone said he and his classmates were told in class to write a few sentences about themselves, and a "status" as if it was a Facebook page. Stone said in his "status" he wrote a fictional story that involved the words "gun" and "take care of business."

"I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur, and, then, in the next status I said I bought the gun to take care of the business"

“I could understand if they made him rewrite it because he did have ‘gun’ in it. But a pet dinosaur?” said his mother Karen Gray. “I mean first of all, we don’t have dinosaurs anymore. Second of all, he’s not even old enough to buy a gun.”

Additional coverage here.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday August 29 2014, @02:58PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday August 29 2014, @02:58PM (#87222)

    "Very irate"? Is it possible to become slightly irate? People always try to make everything sound as dramatic as possible :P

    It's news like this that pushes me towards the Aneristic Delusion. While the act itself is done by the authorities (arresting him), and thus "orderful," it's an arbitrary-sounding decision to get all butthurt about it in the first place. And coming in, confronting him, and then arresting him on the justification of his reaction is dishonest.

    Finally, as has been pointed out before, when there's enough rules that you're functionally always breaking at least one, they can arrest you for a "legitimate" purpose whenever they want.

    Hail Eris

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday August 29 2014, @03:02PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday August 29 2014, @03:02PM (#87227)

    *And coming in, confronting him, and then arresting him on the justification of his reaction (if they didn't have a valid reason to arrest him in mind when they got there) is dishonest.

    Don't our police forces have anything less pointless to waste our tax dollars on than arresting schoolkids who pose no threat to anyone? I'm recalling that article not overly long ago about the girl who got pressured into violating her constitutional rights by a police officer in the principal's office without them even notifying her parents.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday August 29 2014, @06:21PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Friday August 29 2014, @06:21PM (#87321) Journal

    It is akin to saying "very dead".