inkbluesky

Student Arrested for Creative Writing Essay

Chicago high school student Allen Lee, 18, was arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct” for writing an essay in creative writing class that his teacher found disturbing.

Fall out I suppose from the Virginia Tech shootings. I hate censorship and the tendency for so many people to have a Chicken Little response to every tragedy. Still while the school  Safety Committee overreacted the police should have had cooler heads. An arrest record is just that and carries quite a bit of social stigma. Maybe what is lacking is some middle authority - perhaps first having the student talk to someone with some actual expertise at spotting the difference between a creative writing student trying to shock people and the writings of an actual psycho. Our approach to possible criminal intent doesn’t seem to have a medium, it goes from zero to jail in 5.2 seconds. His actual essay has been printed here and it is graphic, but the student’s own explanation which follows is pretty rational. The pathetic kicker is the Safety Committee has a web site set up for anonymous tipsters - with a script that records your IP address.

brooklyn bridge at night 

A Governor Truly Tightens His Belt 

SALEM, Ore., April 27 — He swore off beer, had to put the pricey organic bananas back on the supermarket shelf and squeezed four meals out of a single chicken, all in the name of reducing hunger. And this is not even an election year.

Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski’s decision to live on $3 a day in grocery money for a week, as he had been urged to do in an Oregon “food stamp challenge,” could confound the surest cynic. At 66, he was just elected to his second term, with a budget surplus surpassing $1 billion and a legislature controlled by his fellow Democrats. So just what was there to gain politically?

For a governor who has long pushed to reduce hunger and happens to like eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, maybe that was not the point.

As Wayne Scott, the leader of the House Republicans, put it: “Obviously I’m in the opposite party, so it would be easy for me to knock him for this. Now, I don’t know that I fully believe that he’s eating on $21 a week, but I do think he’s trying to bring attention to the food stamp issue. He’s a pretty straight shooter.”

We do have some odd ideas about spending a few bucks to feed people. On the federal level most food stamp recipients either work and at the end of the month have to choose between paying their rent and utilities or having enough left for groceries. The other major segment of recipients are the elderly. Our total federal outlays for all social spending is about three percent of the budget - which includes food stamps, aid to dependent children ( which you must work forty hours a week to get) , after school programs, etc. Yet we pay two hundred dollars for seventy-five dollar ladders and expensive maghoney desks for rear admirals to the lowest bidding government contractors.