High School Thought Crimes
A US public High School student was recently arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. His crime was a violent, rambling, and poorly written essay completed as part of a creative writing exercise in his English class. It is quite clear from the essay, which is now available several places on the net including here, that Mr. Lee has little future as a writer, and low regard for his English teacher, his school, and much of the world in general.
I’m not going to discuss the essay here. You can see for yourself that it’s crap of the lowest order. Lee has been characterized as a “straight A” or “Honors student” in many reports. This was clearly done to show that this is not a “troubled student”, but after reading the essay, I’m left wonder what level of work a kid in his school has to do to fail.
In any event, my main concern here is the arrest. According to the published reports, Lee was charged with Disorderly Conduct, based on the fact that his writing “disturbed an individual”. That individual was the English teacher who read the essay. Upon reading it, she was understandably alarmed and brought the essay to the attention of the school administrators. Upon considering the essay themselves, the administrators decided to alert the police, who then decided to arrest Lee.
Upon his arrest, Mr. Lee was barred from the school and was told by the Marines that his accepted and impending enlistment was now cancelled due to the charges against him. He has since been allowed back in school, but the Marines have dropped him entirely.
I am not defending Mr. Lee’s essay in any way. In my opinion he clearly intended to shock and disturb his teacher. Nor do I question her reaction. I to would have alerted school officials after reading it. Those officials in turn, were right to closely examine both the essay and their possible responses.
But here’s where I think the train went off the rails. They did not contact the kid’s parents. Instead they went straight to the cops. Why NOT talk to Lee’s parents or even to Lee himself? Why jump straight to the police? If this kid has no record of disturbed or disturbing behavior, and is a generally good student, why NOT try and speak to him and his family?
This incident occurred in the week directly following the Virginia Tech shootings and it’s a virtual (and quite understandable) certainty that folks at Lee’s school were jumpy and reacted to his essay with V-Tech in mind. Lee’s father stated this connection outright after the arrest. However, how does an essay, written as a school assignment and handed in privately to a teacher constitute a crime? Yes, it was vile. Yes, officials at the school have both the right and responsibility to be concerned, but where is the crime here? How is this not a straightforward example of police-state style censorship? If the law was correctly applied, it is clearly a bad law.
Finally, even if Lee’s arrest can be condoned as a legal and appropriate response to his actions, what are the likely results of his arrest? If he is unstable and prone to violence, what are his likely actions now that he’s out on bail? How might he feel about the folks at school who just got him thrown out of school, thrown out of the Marines and arrested?
What concerns me about this series of events are the civil liberties issues and the blind-scared thoughtlessness that was exhibited by both the school and the local cops. First, the arrest was simply unwarranted and consistent with police state-style censorship. Second, it was just a dumb thing to do that increases the chances of a violent and tragic retaliation should that idea be floating around Lee’s head in the first place. Everybody loses.
Be Brave. Be thoughtful. Be human.
-Grant
May 29th, 2007 10:05
Hi Grant-
This story ihas been churning around my head; I find it interesting for many reasons. The most recent one is the choice of “disorderly conduct” as a charge. I checked several websites for a description and definition. While they vary a bit, it seems to be a catch-all charge for someone “disturbing the peace” somehow. It is often used for disruptive but seemingly non-violent crimes.
So my question is, if one person is bothered, is that disrupting the peace? Certainly the teacher’s peace, but that’s not what is meant by the phrase…it implies a wider audience. And if she felt threatened, then there are other charges to file…disorderly conduct seems inappropriate; it seems to be used in its catch-all category.
Certainly, right after the murders at V-Tech, school safety was on many people’s minds. My husband teaches at a college, and I became a little paranoid. But from the reports, the school administration’s actions seem like an extreme first step. Of course the staff should be concerned, but by-passing the student and parents and going straight to the police was a gut reaction, not a thoughtful response. My brother is a high school administrator and has to call the police (not infrequently), but it’s the first call only when there is clear evidence of a crime.
Sounds like the student in the story had senioritis, disliked the teacher, and wanted to upset her. I don’t believe that the (apparently) isolated incident of inappropriate and obnoxious behavior should result in such extreme consequences.
Susan
May 29th, 2007 20:32
Hi Grant. I do suspect that timing is everything , and the VA Tech thing played big here. The kid’s writing , even as “stream-of-consciousness”, seems weak and I agree with the question of how he merits honor roll. My first instinct after reading what is available (a recreated copy of the original; lots of sites that held the original are blocked now) was to mark it up in a sea of red ink and turn it back for improvement. Shocking art needs at least to be good, if not great. ( Joyce was rolling over in his grave. Still smelling his wife’s used undies. Check it out if you don’t believe me.)
On a more serious note, I work with troubled kids and have received only one piece in the past eight years that troubled me enough to bring it to administration attention. That yielded a locker search with the kid standing by, and an uncomfortable but probably necessary conversation between me (the teacher) , his counselor, and the student, about his intent in writing the piece : his writing described a shooting at our school in which he was the shooter, and he named victims. The quality of description and the timing of the prose was quite good, actually.
I don’t regret the incident, and I had enough relationship built with the kid that he continued to work for me and to produce good writing, including some pretty honest poetry. All told, we managed to turn it into a good learning experience about the limits that society will tolerate.
Nick