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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 16690
[Civil]
Date Posted:
11/28/2006
3:56:16 pm EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 7,226
RSS: 18,624
Comments: 8
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Update: Expelled Movie Makers Suing School Corporation
Author: Alex Sanz Source: WTHR-13 Eyewitness News (IN)
Title: EXPELLED MOVIE MAKERS SUING SCHOOL CORPORATION
Two students, expelled over a home movie, are now suing an Indiana school district. The Knightstown school district says the film threatens a teacher.
School administrators considered the movie "The Teddy Bear Master" a threat because a character in the movie orders evil teddy bears to kill a fictional teacher with a real-life name.
The real-life teacher, according to documents obtained by Eyewitness News, learned of the movie from a school principal, who learned of the movie from a parent. After the Henry County prosecutor decided the teenagers did not break any laws, the teacher requested a protective order from police. School records showed the students were then expelled for the rest of the school year.
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Community Thoughts: There are 8 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Let Them Vacation In South Park | Nov 29th. at 6:15:24 am EST
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KatRivers (Berea, Kentucky) - Email Me
Personally, I don't think the article linked up here provides enough info on this case for me to make a truly informed decision. However, my gut response is that these kids need a vacation from school, so I tend to side with the teacher (normally, I tend to do the opposite when we are talking about primary- and secondary-school officials!) . These kids intentionally used the teacher's name in their film, so they were clearly trying to get a message across. Also, you can't tell me that in this day and age of highly technologically literate students (I teach college) that these kids (a) did not think their movie would get out in the public arena, (b) did not make this movie with the intention of broadcasting it and (c) are not savvy enough to realize how the media would react. Puh-lease! Sounds like a lot of free publicity for would-be movie moguls to me. I can't believe the ACLU is wasting time and money on this. If I had read this article before I sent my annual donation to them, I would have kept it!
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| None Of The School's Buisness | Nov 28th. at 8:02:10 pm EST
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Sparky (Hampton, Virginia) - Email Me
First off it is none of the School's buisness or concern what type of movie the students are making as long as it is not on School property or done with school funds.
The Audacity of a Government School to even think it has the right to control the free speech activities of its students is rediculous and criminal.
First off the school is a Government institution and therefore can not punish its students for its free speech activities. If it were a private one it would not have much of a leg to stand on either.
The 1st and 9th amendemnts limitaiton on government DOES APPLY TO SCHOOLS wether they like it or not.
These young people did this movie on there own spare time with there own money and from what I can tell not on school property. This is right up there with schools harrasing and expelling kids for there Religous beliefs, their political beliefs, books they read, games they play, WEBSITES, and opinions on the schools its self for years.
I hope this school gets the lashing it deserves. I also believe this action is criminal in nature and the kids invoved shpuld press criminal charges against the school officials.
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| Illegal Expulsion? | Nov 28th. at 6:19:52 pm EST
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Ahr-Ohn (Bridgeport, Connecticut) - Email Me
If the accused is cleared, examine the accuser.
"After the Henry County prosecutor decided the teenagers did not break any laws, the teacher requested a protective order from police. School records showed the students were then expelled for the rest of the school year."
In an earlier artical, the school could expell if Illegal Acts threatened the function of the school. Since none of the acts were illegal, the school is truant to expell the students, and the Truant Officer should be dragging a couple of idiots back to Kindergarten, where they've certainly been lax in their studies.
Those who can't teach, teach Gym, but for these, there is no room at the Gym.
Arawn
For life in Indiana
Find More info -- HERE
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| "Kenny's Dead!" | Nov 28th. at 4:57:43 pm EST
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me
The wrong guy got the protective order. Assuming there must be a Kenny in the school system, everyone knows that in South Park, Kenny's the most likely one to end up dead. Repeatedly, somehow.
There seems to be an increasing trend for school administrators to loose touch with reality, and pretend "pure speech" not inclusive of the requisite legal elements of criminal acts is something other than that. In a case like this, what if the students request a protective order from the teacher who lashed out against them, asserting he's caused threats from men with guns (police or Sheriffs) used under color of law in a conspiracy to deprive them of civil rights (equal access to school denial without lawful cause) ? That might be fitting, as in combination with a reversal of these suspensions, would require that teacher to avoid being within a certain distance of any school those students had a right to be within, including any sports or extracurricular activity or other event presences beyond predictable classes, for the remainder of this school year and part of next year. In effect, that would force the problem teacher to seek alternate employment.
School staff often pretend two legal realities they find uncomfortable don't exist. One is elevated libel and slander standards applicable to public figures, which most school staff are at least within the context of school activities. Is the teacher in question more likely the type of pervert who lost his virginity to his mother while drunk in an outhouse, or an even stranger type who sleeps with a trumpet? (Real Supreme Court cases involving Jerry Falwell and the former circumstances, and Roxanne Pulitzer and the latter, are current benchmarks for such law.) The other is that as government officials, their actions are subject to citizen grievance expression, including discussion of when some actions do in fact justify real execution of government officials, if they've crossed a difficult line defined historically as "domestic enemy".
Then come schools which suspend or call police over art or political speech depicting firearms, or toy plastic "gun shaped objects", as if those are banned weapons. That amounts to illegal thought policing, just as this action by paranoid officials has resulted in petty tyrant violations of student rights, by adults entrusted to know better.
One time in a small Connecticut school system, two kids found themselves the target of hate crimes accusations because they distributed 800 copies of the Assistant Principal's head morphed onto a Nazi SS trooper in uniform, on April Fool's Day. I contacted state police about that incident, and pointed out that in no way was the student speech anything outside highly protected legal speech, whereas the Principal's actions met the statutory elements of that state's hate crimes law (which required violent or threatening or other criminal actions in addition to intent) , in part because he added religious bias or bigotry in the manner in which he constructed his complaint about the students. Whereas they'd merely denigrated and ridiculed an administrator widely seen by students as obnoxious, he alleged that because April Fool's Day was near major holidays of two religions, the students' speech was a hate crime. Since he'd illegally used government force to remove the students from classes, and expressed such prejudice based intent, he literally perpetrated a felony. The police danced around that one and then declined to act against anyone, though it did get reviewed by a higher level Officer than do most cases, given those circumstances.
As in any power hierarchical system, imposing penalties when those guilty of serious abuses are the authorities themselves is often tricky. It would likely reduce this kind of abuses, whether by driving bad authorities out of power or coaxing well intentioned ones to think more carefully before rushing into foolish or reckless actions, if our legal system eradicated legal equivalents of sovereign immunity, and enabled personal penalties against officials whose actions avoidably and maliciously violate the rights of citizens, young and old alike.
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| I Side With The Teacher On This One..BUT | Nov 28th. at 4:57:02 pm EST
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Wytchone (LaPlace, Louisiana) - Email Me
Since Columbine you can not take any threat lightly. Movie may be 'fantasy" but the students took the time to make it.
If the school board does nothing and the teacher in question does, they get sued.
Students get expelled, school board still gets sued.
I don't think the teacher over reacted but the student feel they have the right to do what every they want.
Should be interesting to see the outcome.
Maybe if the parents and the teacher spoke they could avoid this but alas I don't see that happening.
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