Section 14

18-year old Chicago high school student Allan Lee was arrested last week and charged with disorderly behaviour for writing a violent essay for his creative writing class. Lee has since had his enlistment contract with the Marines revoked because of the charges.

The essay mimicked the content of a violent video game but contained no threats against anyone.

Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho wrote a series of violent plays that came to light after his massacre. The Cary-Grove school board has now massively overreacted, crushing rights as it goes, and criminalised this form of expression. Trying to deal with some of the actual violence that goes on in American schools would be a better idea that making handing in homework a criminal offence.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Education, United States, Violence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.