Patterico's Pontifications

8/30/2007

Is this what Educators mean by Zero Tolerance?

Filed under: Humor — DRJ @ 8:32 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

I have no sense of humor when it comes to wrapping cars or houses but I like a good football prank:

“A high school student who tricked football fans from a crosstown rival into holding up signs that together spelled out, “We Suck,” was suspended for the prank, students said.

Kyle Garchar, a senior at Hilliard Davidson High School in suburban Columbus, said he spent about 20 hours over three days plotting the trick, which was captured on video and posted on the video-sharing Web site YouTube. He said he was inspired by a similar prank pulled by Yale students in 2004, when Harvard fans were duped into holding up cards with the same message.”

Davidson area high school administrators gave Garchar and two accomplices “three days of in-school suspension and banned [them] from extracurricular activities for a semester”:

“We weren’t expecting it to be such a severe punishment,” said Jen Trimmer, 17, one of the students involved. “We just thought it was all in good fun.”

Here’s a You Tube link if you want to see the prank for yourself.

20 Responses to “Is this what Educators mean by Zero Tolerance?”

  1. As a teacher, we are constantly blamed for not teaching critical thinking skills, yet here is a great example of a child who learned those skills and is harassed for that. What I’d like to see now is for the rest of the student body to take the semester off from extracurriculars, just so the administration will understand there are consequences for their actions….

    reff (4e3fcd)

  2. We suck got them suspended? Damn. You can hear that on Sesame Street nowadays.

    JD (0b8ce0)

  3. Jen Trimmer?

    CraigC (c4ea17)

  4. I would have given them the in-house suspension for two reasons:

    1) Appropriating a prank that someone else had already pulled
    2) Making the YouTube video (my old principal once told me when I got in trouble, “It wasn’t so much what you did as it was the way you bragged about it afterwards”)

    But the banishment from extracurriculars seems a bit harsh.

    JVW (6a3590)

  5. Bragging about it has been the downfall of many high schoolers.

    JD (0b8ce0)

  6. Oh, please. It’s not like he made them hold up cards that formed the shape of a gun.

    Pablo (99243e)

  7. They should have gotten extra credit.

    Hazy (d671ab)

  8. Had his cards said: “Bush Sucks” – He would have gotten to a full ride scholarship to an Ivy League School.

    Perfect Sense (b6ec8c)

  9. Seeing as how school administrators come from the ranks of “educators”, and “educators” tend to be raised and trained in the manure of “social justice”, “liberalism”, and PC, why is this a surprise?

    great unknown (d671ab)

  10. I agree such initiative has to be met with something like the suspension (and the principal may not laugh out loud or otherwise acknowledge the talent and planning the stunt required, at least not until they leave the students leave his office to avoid encouraging future miscreants), but the extracurricular activities ban was too much.

    Note this is not new and has nothing to do with zero tolerance. Kids got suspended every year for the annual senior stunt at my high school in the 60s and 70s, even though tradition ensured there would be no injuries or property damage. And we were suspended no matter how funny the administration thought what we did to our cross town rivals was.

    Strick (f42b74)

  11. I’d put that on my resume, as a leadership skill. There’s many a politician that would love to be as good at convincing people to act against their own good.

    Dr T (69c4b2)

  12. I went to high school in the early 50s and we did this stunt (cards spelled out “We Stink”) and everyone laughed, and we got our names in newspapers all the way to Frisco. The stunt was repeated by vandals from Cal Tech who changed the cards in the Rose Bowl game. Sense of humor? We don’t need no stinking sense of humor, we need conformity.

    Duke Martin (4ba8d4)

  13. Enjoying their 15 minutes of fame, the culprits claim they would do it again.

    DRJ (bfe07e)

  14. I would hire them in a minute! That kind of wonderful and creative thinking has been almost snuffed out by the pogroms in public schools against free and creative thought. And to actually follow through with it too. Bravo! What beautiful young minds!

    Feumet (fab73a)

  15. What was the behavior that needed punishment?

    Pulling off the practical joke on a rival?
    —Since when are practical jokes that cause no harm such a problem?

    The language?
    —While some might not use this slang, it is common today and not generally considered vulgar.

    The school administration being embarrassed?

    Aren’t there more important things to worry about?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  16. Well they expell or arrest kids for drawing pictur

    krazy kagu (3e8790)

  17. Vote for another Hilliard City Schools levy and support such an idiotic administration? Wouldn’t think of it! The administration’s actions have done more to perpetuate this wonderfully orchestrated prank causing Kyle to enjoy much more than his allotted 15 minutes of fame. Get a sense of humor Hilliard and reverse your decision on Kyle’s punishment.

    Julienne Escolas (2cdcdd)

  18. The word is out. The next group of kids trying this prank will get the snot beaten out of them. Can I say “snot?”

    Alta Bob (8b8110)

  19. Kids have been arrested or expelled for drawing pictures of guns or have had knives found under their cars floorboeard by snooping school officials and grammer schools kids who have been cuffed for pinching or had nail clipper on them ZERO TOLLERENCE IS STUPID

    krazy kagu (fb44c4)


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