Do note this comment attached to the article:

"I taught at this school for a few years, and hearing this story makes me glad I left teaching in the inner city. There is a no tolerance rule on markers in the school. The reason being is that every day when the rule was not enforced, the bathrooms and halls were constantly tagged with gang writings."

This is apparently an inner-city school with serious gang problems. In this context, telling students that they are not allowed to have the kinds of markers used for gang tags makes perfect sense.

I would like to take a permanent marker and write the word "Idiot" across the foreheads of DeLynn Woodside and Miguel Campos.

ARRESTED?

Is every disciplinary action in school ultimately to end with a police record?

WTF?

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

-- Ayn Rand

If you criminalize Sharpies only criminals will have Sharpies!

It's not clear to me if the boy was merely writing on paper or writing on his desk. The report says both things. Some of the comments on the Smoking Gun site described in detail what the teacher coulda, shoulda done before calling in the cops (if she weren't such a stupid thug who should be sued, fired, flayed, or run out of town on a rail dontcha know), without considering whether the teacher will receive sufficient support from school administration or the parents to allow her to keep the boy after school, make him clean desks, etc.

Calling the police in does sound pretty silly from where I'm sitting. But from where I'm sitting, it's a pretty easy judgment to make.

Maybe some comments from teachers would be helpful here.

No no no Amy. Merely drawing a picture of boobs wouldn't be cause for a sex offender charge. A charge of 'creating material harmful to children' perhaps... Now if he'd shown it to his friends, then he could be charged not only as a sex offender but also for illegally distributing pornographic material.

If he drew a gun he'd be on his way to Gitmo now.

I'm glad I grew up before the country went mad.

On the topic of zero tolerance. My 16 year old's backpack was searched at school last week after a city police officer caught her jay walking (off campus mind you). The officer hauled her and her friends into the Supervision Office. Because 2 of the kids smelled like cigarette smoke, all the kids were subject to a search. During the search - in my presence - they found a knife in my daughter's backpack. 1. I knew she had the knife, she uses it when she goes to junkyards to pull car parts; 2. It's not supposed to leave the house - she forgot to take it out after her last trip to the junkyard. After I nearly killed her in front of the assistant principal and the police officer, she explained why it was still in her backpack (she had been at her dad's that weekend, she took her backpack to do her homework and threw the knife in there and forgot to put it away). She was suspended for 5 days pending expulsion from the school and most likely the district. We met with the principal and the assistant principal the following morning and needless to say, given the fanatacism surrounding zero tolerance policies, I didn't hold out much hope that the meeting was going to do much for her but went anyway. The principal actually used her brain and looked at the whole picture and listened to the arguments my daughter and I presented. My daughter is a good student, not a discipline problem at the school and has 96% attendance (I mention this because we know schools want/need the money for kids attending). I was very surprised when the assistant principal told us that the officer wanted to arrest my daughter. Thankfully, he also used his noodle and informed the officer they would handle it at the school level. The assistant principal called me later that day and let me know they weren't going to expel my daughter.

Unbelievable, sara -- well, in a rational sense. But, stuff like this happens all the time now.

And teens get on the sex offender list all the time for dubious reasons. A markered picture would just be a different medium:

http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/15-year-old-girl-faces-sex-offender-status-for-the-next-20-years

A friend of mine had to tell her 9-year-old son to stop drawing monsters in class. Not because she thinks drawing monsters is bad, but because the school does, and she doesn't want to deal with the hassle.

So last year, over Thanksgiving, I helped him draw the most awesome monster ever.

You know Amy, I do feel for the girl, but until women sart to feel the weight of these unjust laws nothing will really change, teenage boys have been getting the shaft on child porn laws for more then a decade and most people dont care.

Send enough teenage girls to jail and these laws will disappear faster then the changes to alimony laws popped up when women were ordered to pay support for their dead beat exes

A teacher in my town was assaulted in public for doing something like this. She had a group of middle school boys arrested because she heard them talking about a game that they play in the woods. Apparently they'd run around with paintball guns and pretend to be waging 'war' on each other. So she called the police and told them that the boys were plotting to shoot up the school. But it's evident that she knew they weren't, she just didn't like that they played with guns. In her mind, any boy who likes to play paintball is evil and intends to kill people.

Well a few weeks ago a couple of women caught up with her in the parking lot of the shopping center and one of them maced her, then they got her on the ground and kicked a few times. I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, I don't approve of violence, but on the other, it's the only way that we can show the teachers that they'll be held accountable. We can't fire them, and they're never disciplined, so what other recourse do people have?

That violence against her is horrible.

Boys probably have always and will always play with guns. I linked to a Jonathan Rauch piece a while back where he noted that if you don't allow your child to have a gun, they'll make one out of a carrot.

My friend C., who had us over for dinner last night, told a story of how some PC mother dropped off her kid to play at their house -- a kid who wasn't allowed to have toy guns. C.'s kids -- now lovely young men -- were. When the kid's mom came to pick him up, he bounded down the stairs decked out like a tiny little soldier of fortune.

"The marker ban--which apparently is aimed at curbing graffiti--stems from a city ordinance making it illegal to possess spray paint or a permanent marker on private property (without the owner’s permission). "

Since when is a public school "private property?"

One thing that always bothers me about the use of income disparity statistics is that the explanation is presumed to be society's pernicious discrimination is showing through in the numbers. But when you say, okay, let's assume that disparity evidences discrimination by society, and then look at other, even more dire situations rather than mere income.

What then should society do to address the fact that most prisoners (something like > 90% of prisoners, IIRC) are men? What then should society do to address the fact that over 90% of fatalities at work are men? What then should we do about the fact that men die so much younger than women? What then should we do about the fact that most violent criminals are men and so are most murder victims? Etc. Being a guy can really suck, relative to being a gal, if you look at those numbers, not just income.

After all, per the claims about income disparities, surely those more dire disparities are similarly caused by societal forces, not innate differences.

The response I typically got in grad school and beyond was one of the following (1) refusal to even address this allegedly "reductio ad absurdum" argument, (2) refusal to concede that any disparity on the other side evidences anything except, perhaps, patriarchy eating its own young, (3) those differences are explained by the vile hormone testosterone, whereas income differences are not.

In sum, the use of stats and the explanation that society is to blame (and therefore must radically alter itself) is only allowed to those on one side of the debate.

Whoops, wrong thread.

@Miss Alkon: "I linked to a Jonathan Rauch piece a while back where he noted that if you don't allow your child to have a gun, they'll make one out of a carrot."

We used baseball bats. And plastic toy bowling pins made wonderful grenades. I remember filing out of the church many years ago. As we were waiting to shake hands with the preacher (a kindly older gent), the young son of another parishoner starting making gun sounds and making the gun sign with his hand. His father (who sometimes wore sandals with his Sunday suit) admonished, "We don't like guns." This prompted the preacher to start reminiscing about the gun he had as a boy!

Oh, and since it's the Holidays, I'll drag out my old story about third grade. It was a public school Christmas (not Holiday) program. I had a speaking part as an elf. I had to memorize a rhyme about how I was the elf who made all the guns, and how much in demand they were. Christmas and guns -- a double un-PC whammy! Probably would cause mass apoplexies in today's schools.

Yes, I'm rambling. I'll stop doing that now.

OMG you have GOT to be kidding me....

"That violence against her is horrible."

Yes and no. As Nan mentioned, there really is no other method of response left.

If a bully is never shamed they'll start acting without shame. That teacher lied and brought down violence/force on those students using the state authority. Hopefully she'll learn something from her beat down in the parking lot. I doubt it though.

This is apparently an inner-city school with serious gang problems. In this context, telling students that they are not allowed to have the kinds of markers used for gang tags makes perfect sense.

There is no excuse for giving a kid a police record for using a marker. Not only does it not make perfect sense, it is perfectly senseless.

There is no excuse for summoning the police to deal with a child using a marker, or for invoking some obscure statute to criminalize the behavior of a child.

There is no excuse for keeping this fat fool of an incompetent so-called teacher in the classroom.

There is no excuse for keeping in office the administration that allowed this insanity to be perpetrated. They should do a thorough housecleaning there; throw every one of the bums out.

Why do I have the feeling this teacher just called down a whole lot of grief on herself.

Middle school children have high school siblings. While they may take great delight in abusing their younger brothers and sisters, typically they don't take kindly to others doing the same. Nor do I think you'll see a lot of parents playing the role of restraining influence.

When this teacher is down at Big O for a set of new tires and has to repaint her house and replace a few windows, I hope she won't be confused as to why it's happening.

How much do you have to hate a kid to call the police for something like this?

I think it depends what was really going on. Was he doing his school work or was he surreptitiously drawing/writing something very dark intentionally so it would bleed through the paper onto the desk?

It's really easy to get hysterical one way or the other but the real issues here are why doesn't the smoking gun make it clear, and why don't readers wait to get all the facts before jumping to conclusions, and why do people, advice goddess, and sites linking* to this one included trust the smoking gun enough to base conclusions on their writing? My guess is that the writers and linkers crafted their pieces to generate outrage and blog comments, when a more clearly written, informative piece would not have done so nor attracted an equally hasty instalanche*. However I'll wait until I get more facts before I draw any firm conclusions ;)!

"Boys probably have always and will always play with guns. I linked to a Jonathan Rauch piece a while back where he noted that if you don't allow your child to have a gun, they'll make one out of a carrot."

Eh, never mind carrots, boys will use their fingers as 'guns' if they have nothing else. And not just boys, I still do regularly and I'm in my mid-30s. We're hard-wired for handling weapons.

or was he surreptitiously drawing/writing something very dark intentionally so it would bleed through the paper onto the desk?

And that justifies calling the police? Seriously.

Given the graffiti problem at the school, I consider the school justified in trying to ban permanent markers from campus.

According to the article, the teacher directed the student to hand over the marker. The student refused to do so.The teacher did the right thing in not trying to take the marker from the student, and in referring the student to a higher authority. It is not a good idea to get into a tug-of-war with a student.

It was poor policy to take the student off campus for this. That is like using a gun to shoot a flea. It would have been better to handle the situation in-campus for 1)insubordination and 2) breaking of a school rule.

This could have been done with immediate intervention by calling the office and having a hall monitor or campus police officer take the student to an administrator and/or a detention room. Depending on the school, sometimes the student is expected to walk the referral himself to the office, but for that to work, the student needs to know the referral will be followed up on.

Or, the teacher could have written a referral for an administrator to handle at a later time, and walked the referral to an administrator's office at the end of the day. That would have been my choice. It isn't a serious issue that needs to be handled immediately to prevent damage to life or limb.

I would suggest the teacher show the student what she had written on the referral: "insubordination: refused to hand over permanent marker," so that the student can't later lie about it.

This might also give the student a chance to hand over the marker and avoid harsher consequences.

Either some after school detention or in-school suspension would have been appropriate. Perhaps the student could have gotten involved in cleaning the marker off his desk as restitution.

Calling a parent would be a good idea. It doesn't always work, but you have to try.

For those who consider my suggestions for consequences to be too harsh, I suggest that you teach in an inner city middle school and get back with us.

Ok. This is a case of literally using sledgehammer approach to rule writing and enforcement. There are other means other than calling law enforcement personnel to deal with an issue that could have been dealt appropriately by the teacher and the school administration by confiscating the marker and detention.

The bigger hammer approach to rule making and enforcement often results in those enforcing the rules looking both petty and stupid however in this case they went past both of these levels into something far more appropriate in a farcical play.

People send their children to government-run schools -- why exactly?

I taught for several years at the high school level and I would have to say this is ridiculous. If gang graffiti is the problem, then banning permanent markers makes sense. It MIGHT make sense to notify the cops if he were drawing gang graffiti on the paper or desk. But this seems so over the top that it's almost unbelievable.

Why in the world were the cops called in this case? Had the kid been a previous discipline problem? Was he disturbing the class? Was his "crime" writing gang graffiti during class?

I don't understand this incident at all.

There's obviously more to this story, such as what was a student doing drawing with a permanent marker in the middle of math class? For the teacher to fill out a citation, the student was probably constantly disruptive, and an endless source of headaches.

"I taught at this school for a few years, and hearing this story makes me glad I left teaching in the inner city. There is a no tolerance rule on markers in the school. The reason being is that every day when the rule was not enforced, the bathrooms and halls were constantly tagged with gang writings."

I'm perplexed and appalled at the notion that anyone might think that mere possession of something -- anything-- should be a crime. Especially something like a magic marker. Should it be a crime to deface property? Yes, absolutely. But to be holding a marker? Seriously? Punish
crimes with victims, please.

I taught in an urban, low socio-economic school district for 25 years. We had a similar ban on permanent markers. I solved the problem by taking the markers away if they came out of the back packs. After the first couple students lost their markers I didn't have any more problems during the school year.
Btw if the marker had bled through the paper I made them clean the desk at that point.

MarkD wrote, "If he drew a gun he'd be on his way to Gitmo now."

Only if the SWAT team wasn't able to riddle him with bullets first.

Back when I was in high school we all had guns. Pistols and rifles. Just about every car in the lot had a firearm. Yeah, us barbarians in Eastern New Mexico all had guns and no one got shot.

YA see, it's like this; Leftists imbue some weird nefarious soul on inanimate objects and yet find forgiveness for their murderous friends who use them. It wasn't the Che on their T-shirts that shot innocent people in the head, it was that gun that made him do it.

Free Mumia, dude.

This school should be prosecuted under the RICO act.

Ban only applies to "broad tipped" indelible markers possessed on "private property" without the owner of the property's consent.

The applicable portion of the code applies to all persons regardless of their age.

______________

http://library.municode.com/showDocumentFrame.aspx?clientID=14500&docID=0

§ 35-202. - Possession of aerosol spray paint container or broad-tipped indelible marker on private property prohibited without consent of property owner.

No person may possess an aerosol spray paint container or broad-tipped indelible marker on any private property unless the owner, agent, manager, or other person having control of the property consented to the presence of the aerosol spray paint container or broad-tipped indelible marker.
_______________

IAALBINYL
TINLA

Fixed link to ordinance.

http://library.municode.com/HTML/14500/level3/OKMUCO2007_CH35NU_ARTVIIPRSAPOAESPINMAMI.html#OKMUCO2007_CH35NU_ARTVIIPRSAPOAESPINMAMI_S35-202POAESPPACOBRPPINMAPRPRPRWICOPROW

Note also the preceding section which deals with possession on public property.

_____________

§ 35-201. - Prohibition on possession of aerosol spray paint by minors.

No person under the age of 18 years may possess an aerosol spray paint container or broad-tipped indelible marker on any public property unless accompanied by a parent, guardian, employer, teacher or other adult in any similar relationship and such possession is for a lawful purpose.
_______________

Student in a classroom is "accompanied by a ... teacher", so this shouldn't apply either.

For a while the teacher had a "hate her" Facebook page. She pulled her own Facebook page when the news hit the fan. I guess that Facebook must have "pulled" the "hate page", because it's no longer there.

Head on over to Facebook and join up.

on the other hand, take a look ... it's still there:
"http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/home.php?sk=group_132959130096771"

Hey, her home phone number is (405) 685-7795

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/boy-13-busted-illegal-marker-possession

Amy, your response to Nan's comment on December 23, 2010 at 8:01 AM is wrong, wrong, wrong. If a schoolteacher decides to play with the lives and futures of children engaged in a legal activity because she does not approve of the activity, she deserves the worst. As we can't seem to hold such teachers accountable these days, the beating is an acceptable, if uncomfortable option.

We need extensive automated reputation networks with face recognition software so that idiots like this teacher can be relentlessly ostracised by everyone in the country who resents this sort of arrogant, statist behavior. No free lifts in case of emergencies, no friendly neighbors calling 911 upon seeing a problem at her residence, no medical attention from unsympathetic privately-owned emergency responder firms, no jobs outside of the government, no apartments to let or houses for sale from angry anti-statists, many hotels off-limits, etc., etc. There might be a constant rain of hate stares and nasty remarks, a distressing torrent of special "fees" added to various services, and the constant suspicion of servers spitting in food at restaurants before unsmilingly serving it to her. Life could get very uncomfortable indeed.

Why didn't the responding police officer use discretion and refuse to initiate a juvenile adjudication? He or she has that authority. Why can't officers in these situations stop the train before it even gets going? He could have explained to the teacher that this was simply not appropriate for judicial action. Of course, then the teacher would have probably gone above the officer's head and the officer would have been ordered to start the juvenile process. There is a lot of buck-passing in the system. The cop probably figured a juvenile prosecutor or judge would take care of it and was just placating the teacher. Regardless of the kid's intent, this is a silly misuse of the criminal justice process.

We need school vouchers. If people can choose where to send their kids to school (most people have a hard time affording private schools), then that should get rid of a lot of the problems. A private school should have an easier time getting rid of incompetent or mean teachers. And if you didn't care for a private school, you could send your kids somewhere else.

This also could be huge for kids from disadvantaged homes who wanted to make a better life for themselves. Education is usually very important for future earning ability.

When I was a kid, my parents didn't have much, but they did read to us a lot and emphasized education. My siblings and I went to college and have white collar jobs and are doing pretty well.

"Beating somebody up is never an acceptable option."

This is, unfortunately, idealistic nonsense.

When one is faced with an intolerable situation, one must respond. Preferably, one should respond with the minimum necessary to effect the desired change. Possible responses range from the mild (private plea or reprimand) to the severe (rebellion and open warfare). To rule out responses on the severe end of this spectrum is to render oneself incapable of action in circumstances where such responses are both appropriate and necessary; do not fool yourself, such circumstances exist (tyranny comes to mind).

In this case, because this teacher's actions were beyond the pale and because teachers have become so insulated from repercussions of their actions in general, I fully believe that the mild violence she experienced was the appropriate response.

As a person who is in law enforcement for the past 20 years or so,I have to come to the defense of the officer involved.... I dont presume to know about the laws in that state but here in Ca. when someone demands to make a citizens arrest, the officer is REQUIRED to receive the arrest. If he refuses, the officer can be criminally prosecuted himself. The fact that he had the teacher sign the ticket indicates to me that he was not too keen on the violation and that by making the teacher sign the cite, she not only made the arrest, but pressed charges AND accepted any liability for a false arrest.

I agree this aituation is stupid and the teacher went too far. I had a similar incident involving my daughter some years ago when they attempted to have her cited for bringing sharp dental picks onto the school bus. They were of the opinion that these picks were weapons, not tools used in the art class for sculpting. WHat allowed my daughter to escape the criminal charges was the fact that she had been given these weapons by the art teacher. I merely offered the solution of: if my daughter was prosecuted, I was going to the classroom and arresting the teacher for giving her the "weapons". It was amazing how quickly the superintendent backed down.

This is undoubtedly extremely traumatic for any child. When you really think about it, calling the police on a child without having a really good reason is really 'child abuse by proxy', committed by the teacher. I think it should be called what it is, and should be considered a category of crime. This teacher is a child abuser, nothing more, nothing less.

Seriosly, I'm a blog fan and with all of the blogs out there now, not all of them that has been posted stands out like yours does. Your blog caught my eye and I really like your ideas that you've benn shared with us..Thumbs up!