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Officials say drawing by teen ‘absolutely considered a threat’
A 13-year-old boy has been suspended for three days by an Arizona public school because he sketched a picture that resembled a gun, something school officials said they “absolutely” believed could pose a threat.
“My son is a very good boy,” Paul Mosteller told the television station. “He doesn’t get into trouble. There was nothing on the paper that would signify that it was a threat of any form.”
The principal at Payne Junior High School kept the actual drawing, and officials with the Chandler Unified School District declined to release any information about the situation.
Mosteller said her son was just idly drawing pictures, and ended up with a fake laser.
“He was just basically doodling and not thinking a lot about it,” she said. “We’re not advocates for guns. We don’t have guns in our home. We don’t promote the use of guns. My son was just basically doodling on a piece of paper.”
School officials who initially banned the student for five days lowered the penalty to three days after discussing the situation with the boy’s father.
“I just can’t believe that there wasn’t another way to resolve this,” Mosteller told the Associated Press. “He’s so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.”
The drawing did not show blood or bullets. Nor did it show injuries or target anyone, the Mostellers said. It just resembled a gun.
Terry Locke, a spokesman for the district, told the AP the sketch was “absolutely considered a threat,” and threatening words or pictures are punishable.
However, the school failed to contact police, and failed to provide counseling or an evaluation for the student to determine if he intended it as a threat, officials said.
The student’s father, Ben Mosteller, said school officials told him how serious they considered the situation, and discussed the 1999 massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, where two teens shot and killed 12 students and a teacher, and injured dozens more.
That, he said, was extreme and offensive. The family already has contacted the district’s governing board about the incident.
The station said it checked the rules students must follow at school, and found there’s nothing in a portion of the student handbook that addresses conduct to indicate the drawing of a weapon poses threat.
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
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Remember the good ol’ days when you could play guns at recess without getting in trouble? Now you say the word “shoot” and they’ve got the FBI breathing down your neck.
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I HONESTLY BELIEVE THESE SCHOOLS ARE BRAINWASHING OUR CHILDREN.THEY ARE MAKING THEM FEEL THAT GUNS ARE BAD NO MATTER WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE.I FEEL THAT OUR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS AND PROTECT OUR FREEDOM AND PROPERTY WILL BE TESTED TIME AND TIME AGAIN…VIVA NRA L.BARNES
Sure look’s like a space ship to me…
These zero-tolerance rules mean youy need to check your mind at the school enterance… it’s no wonder the kids ain’t learning squat.
Rubbish.
Fifteen years ago when I was in middle school, I was taken out of class and sent to the school psychiatrist for a full evaluation on my psych profile when my english teacher reccomended me as being a threat to myself and others.
Why?
I drew a little (about the size of a postage stamp) picture of a smiley face with a bullet hole in its head with a handgun next to it.
I thought it was a whimsical statement reflecting the grade I knew my paper would get after I turned it in. Not that I had secret urges to kill.
Teachers can be massively paranoid, but wouldn’t you be too if you had to be around hundreds of screaming hormone filled, easily influenced youth day in and day out that are all brainwashed from a lifetime of mind-numbing television, being packed full of ideas of what society is and how they should act based off of… reality TV… then there’s the parents that are too busy with their own shit to pay attention to their kids and then they blame their children’s behaviour on TV and video games.
Bullshit. Don’t have kids if you can’t care for them.
Ah, but I digress…
Hmm its funny how it looks like a god damn street with happy people walking along the sidewalks…i guess the failed attemt at an angle perspective made it look like a…a gun i guess.
i remember when we played cops and robbers cowboys and indians all involved the mighty finger pointing as a gun heck i remember when we used to bring squirt guns to school i understand you have to be careful but lets not let good times to remember be thrown out by being so uptight we cant enjoy the things that are suppossed to be fun like our school days !!!!!
It had little people on it for goodness sake
I guess ‘hangman’ is out now too, aye??
omg this school is retarted
and that little boy didnt do anyi\thing wrong
and the school just wanted attention.
so i dont think that little boy didnt do anything wrong he was simply being a kid and doodling because he was bored at school.
(like every other kid to ever attend school)
What a bunch of fear mongering idiots! That school want to see a threat…. try punishing my child for absolutely nothing and see how I react. It is not guns that is making this world a screwed up place to live… It is people like this that are so hell bent on enforcing their views of the world that they are willing to take down an innocent child to do it.
School administrators are worthless parasites. This apparently gave them something upon which to focus. It’s pathetic that they weren’t even aware of their own codes of conduct. Zero tolerance = zero intelligence. “Absolutely considered a threat” followed by a lecture on Columbine. I detect a wonderful coupling of both narcissism and paranoia. I’m sure all involved on the school end are “tolerant and intelligent” people. Yep. At the very least, an apology is warranted to the kid. What the hell can you draw in school that doesn’t offend some fruit? Better not to draw and just sit in your seat and hope your continued existence doesn’t offend somebody. Don’t think, speak or in any way express yourself… it’s for the best. Stupid never takes a day off.
This is ridiculous. Some people are so legalistic they can’t use the little brains that they have. We used to say shit like “I’m gonna kill you” and nobody thought twice about it. Now you can’t even draw what looks like a crappy laser gun without some dumbass crapping themselves.
I remember playing with an straightened/unbent paper clip in 5th grade. The teacher told me it could be considered a weapon!! That I can’t have a paper clip, or I may be suspended. The teacher’s name was Mr. Boonie, we quickly changed it to Mr. Goonie!
Looks like you would need to home-school your kids, look at the crappy school system!
If common sense was not so brainwashed out of the school administrators, etc. the outcome would be different.
They would also need to STOP watching ‘Roadrunner’ cartoons, and STOP making a wish list off that ACME catalog!
You could roll it up and make a pea shooter out of it. Or give somebody a nasty paper cut.
It’s time for sensible people to stand up to this crap. Everybody in that school district with a brain should pressure their school board to remove these imbeciles from their positions.