Political correctness gone awry

On an additional note, I have completed the MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station) examinations, and yes a psychiatric evaluation is included in the process. If I’m qualified to defend the country, I believe I am qualified to attend school.
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smart kid
 
smart kid
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Seems like a reasonably smart kid overall, after reading a couple different stories on this. About the only "stupid" thing he seems to have done is assumed that when a teacher said they wanted "free writing" that they meant just that.
 
Smart kid, only if he thought for himself... But we teach kids to obey the rules. He did. Considering the timing of the VT massacre, wasn't really smart. (book smart vs. street smart)

Something that life will teach him. Heck, I don't doubt he's already learned a lesson or two!
 
a) google for "lowered military standards" and see lots of sourcing indicating that the bar has been lowered.

b) What's the background of this kid in this class? If this is a singular event, then it looks blown out of proportion. If this is a pattern,

Free writing has a lot to do with free association, useful in deep inspection of someone's psyche. Less useful for a police action, more so for counselors. Intent is not obvious in the least.
 
In one of the links I gave, is another article on the USMC dropping the delayed entry contract with Lee after the misdemeanor charges were filed.

Lee is charged with 2 counts of disorderly conduct.

Ah... here's a link from the Boston Herald. Here's part of the story...
Because of pending criminal charges stemming from his essay, Lee’s recruiter told him Friday that the Marine Corps has discharged him from his contract, said Sgt. Luis R. Agostini, spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Station Chicago.

"Basically, he is no longer an applicant to become a Marine," Agostini said.

The senior at suburban Cary-Grove High School was charged this week with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct after the principal turned his creative writing essay over to police.


Lee initially faced just one charge, but an amended complaint filed Thursday cited a second passage.

"In light of recent events (at Virginia Tech), that is part of the context of what happened that makes the reaction all the more reasonable," said Tom Carroll, first assistant state’s attorney in McHenry County.

Lee, who has a 4.2 grade-point average and never has been in trouble before, is being tutored at administrative offices while school officials decide his future, said his lawyer, Thomas Loizzo.

The charges are a product of paranoia, born of the massacre of 32 students at Virginia Tech by a social outcast who then killed himself, Loizzo said.
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Because of pending criminal charges stemming from his essay, Lee’s recruiter told him Friday that the Marine Corps has discharged him from his contract,
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So basically the kids future is ruined for the near future because he did what he was asked to do.

How willing will next years students be to incriminate themselves with this exercise?
 
The military keeps records on everything, this will haunt him to some degree ,at least initially.

My father was denied security clearance because he went to a Klan rally in his teens, till the day he died he had no idea how they found out
 
Disorderly conduct. Should be banned as an unconstitutional offense, as too vague/ambiguous. I thought we WANTED to encourage creativity and the communication of warning signs, not DIS-courage them, as this action will cause.
 
It wasn't so much the violence of the essay that bothered me, but more of the fact that it was written with really, really bad English - and given that this student is supposedly a 4.2 GPA honor student. My my, how standards have fallen.

Only 5 years ago, I was sitting in a high school english class and I know something like that rambling mess wouldn't pass. Actually, it would've received an automatic failing grade because no teacher I've ever had would tolerate all that chicken scratch.

Maybe it's nothing, but did anyone else notice that this kid has similar physical characteristics as the VT killer - the buzz cut, glasses, korean.
 
It wasn't so much the violence of the essay that bothered me, but more of the fact that it was written with really, really bad English - and given that this student is supposedly a 4.2 GPA honor student. My my, how standards have fallen.

Only 5 years ago, I was sitting in a high school english class and I know something like that rambling mess wouldn't pass. Actually, it would've received an automatic failing grade because no teacher I've ever had would tolerate all that chicken scratch.
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Reading is fundamental. It was "free writing." If you're not familiar with the term, open up the PDF Antipitas posted of the assignment. In free writing uf the grammar is perfect, or even close, you're not doing it right.
 
Grammar was pretty good. It's not that, though. It's just really bad English. I had free writing assignments in high school tool. I just wrote pages about the weather outside, or that strange smell in the classroom, or reasons why I hate tree-hugging hippies, but at least I had some coherency.

Anyone who does a lot of typing on a message board knows - once you get started, it's hard to stop ranting, but at least you have some sort of train of thought. as a demonstration, I typed this post without hesitation or thought along the way. I just typed.

Oh, and the shoddy handwriting is no excuse. I lost points for bad penmanship. my handwriting is decent now as a result.
 
Also, putting in writing how you really hate your superiors while using a bunch of expletives is a big, big no-no. This issue is not a matter of thought police or PC - just some freaking common sense. You have got to be one giant idiot to attempt something like that. But that opinion was about the only one he could halfway articulate in his essay.

So like I said before - I'm more angry at his sheer stupidity than about his writing about killing students and then some. The school should be more worried about how he's managing his grades than what legal actions to take.
 
Here is the text of the link given in the thread header.

Excerpts from Allen Lee's essay

By The Associated Press
Published April 27, 2007, 7:36 PM CDT
Excerpts from an English essay written by Allen Lee, an Cary-Grove High School senior charged with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct after his principal turned the creative writing assignment over to police. All spelling and grammar errors are as they appeared in Lee's essay.



"Blood, sex and booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s...t...a...b...puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did."

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"A person is smart, but people are dumb selfish animals. We can't make rules for ourselves so we vote others to do it for us, but we can't even do that right, I mean seriously, Bush for President?

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"My current English teacher is a control freak intent on setting a gap between herself and her students like a 63 year old white male fortune 500 company CEO, and an illegal immigrant. ... And baking brownies and rice crispies does not make up for it, way to try and justify yourself as a good teacher while underhandidly looking for complements on your cooking.

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"No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting."

Copyright © 2007, The Associated Press
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Also, putting in writing how you really hate your superiors while using a bunch of expletives is a big, big no-no. This issue is not a matter of thought police or PC - just some freaking common sense. You have got to be one giant idiot to attempt something like that. But that opinion was about the only one he could halfway articulate in his essay.
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Well, it depends on how you look at this. It isn't like we're talking about "his superiors" in the career sort of sense. This is an academic environment, where in theory a little bit of free thought is encouraged...it was a teacher, not a drill sergeant. Also, we're talking about a senior talking about what he thinks of a teacher that he honestly won't have to deal with for too much longer, not somebody talking about their boss who they'll have to work under (and to an extent be at the mercy of) possibly for years.

Basically, in theory there was nothing this teacher could really do to the kid. Without supporting evidence from other assignments, she couldn't fail him (and thus affect his graduation status). She'd really have a hard time failing him on this assignment, since he did exactly as asked. There was no direct threat of harm, nor much of an implied threat. Had this been written on April 15, he'd have been looking at (at most) a "talking to" from the principal. Instead, because of the usual post-tragedy idiocy that always seems to plague this country, he's facing charges.

Charges that I'll bet dollars to pesos will end up dropped.

It's a giant load of crap.
 
First of all, here's hoping this case gets before a judge who's had a couple of teenagers pass through public high-schools lately and can see this as a crock of dung. Then chews out the authorities involved for being dumba$$ breaucrats.

Times sure have changed. In my junior high year a creative writing class assignment was to write an "intriguing" story using specific words from a list and certain elements of style. Since I'd just finished reading Starship Troopers (original by Heinlein) I got "creative". Think of a combination of Red Dawn and Starship Troopers and you might get the idea.

Turned out to be a long short story (thirty-one typewritten pages) but the teacher gave me an A-minus (pesky punctuation) without a quibble over the violence or swearing (of which Hell and Damn were about as bad as it got).
 
Read that essay and I noticed he made a personal jab at the english teacher. of COURSE a public school teachier sin't going to take that laying down. In high school I had a friend who was getting touchy feely with a girl we both knew so I told him off and we walked away. Later he showed up in the same hall me, another guy half my size, and the girl he was trying to feel up during lunch. We stood between him and he looked at it as a challenge to get by us. When he started to break through and was reaching for the girl I did a headlock takedown on him. A teacher saw this and thought we were fighting (I suppose in a way we were but there was never any mean intentions other than his pervers desires) We were about to get off with a warning when he called the teacher a "stupid b***h" at which point she sent us to the principle and we were all required to apologize to her.
 
In my experience, there are three kinds of high school teachers--those who have just gotten their cert and really don't know what they're doing yet, those that really do enjoy their job and want to make a difference, and those who aren't good enough to be teaching college so they get by with a step down and usually have a complex over it. I'd guess this one is either #1 or #3--most likely 3.
 
did anyone else notice that this kid has similar physical characteristics as the VT killer - the buzz cut, glasses, korean.
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Why do you insist on trying to play the race card with the VT incident, it's getting sickenly boring
 
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