Student suspended for sketching gun

[Squatch]

Parents angered by the suspension of their child for drawing a picture of a gun on an assignment paper are questioning the Chandler Unified School District's policies dealing with such incidents.

The Payne Junior High eighth-grader, along with another student, was suspended Monday for five days. Parents Paula and Ben Mosteller were able to get the suspension reduced to three after meeting with school officials.

The uproar over the drawing, which the student turned in with a school assignment, cuts to the question of what constitutes a "threat."

Craig Gilbert, Chandler director of secondary education, said there's a range of punishment administrators can hand down for "implied threats," ranging from a parent conference to suspension and expulsion.

Link

The "gun" in question:



That kid drew (pun intended) a gun! Everybody panic!!1!

[napi21]

1. I HOPE there's more to this story than you've written! n/t

[Squatch]

3. If you rotate it 90 degrees to the left, it looks like an apartment building

[Tesha]

4. Maybe in a "Harrison Bergeron" world, he could get a job as an artiste. (NT)

[SteveM]

12. Yes, yes -- I see the atrium, now.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. I feel certain that there is

The range of punishment comment says a lot.

[napi21]

10. You understand what I mean? I can sit here and draw a pic of a weapon,

and it's just a pic. No big deal. Or, I can be involved in an argument with a neighbor, and draw that same pic, as an example of what I will use to confront them. Or, I'm a member of a new gang, and I decided that drawing was going to be MY signature on all my homework or test papers.

Somehow I doubt a kid just drawing a pic that had no other link to anything wouldn't have received a suspension!

[MindPilot]

2. That looks more like it was drawn by a 3-year-old

When I was in school the fad was to draw combat scenes. Unfortunately my drawings were never scary enough to get me few days off.

[soothsayer]

5. you can carry guns in AZ. how bizarre.

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. But not in a school

There is a federal law that bans weapons from every public school in the USA. Maybe it applies to private schools too. I am not sure.

[Mrs. Overall]

6. Another example of doublethink--

suspend the student for drawing a gun, but make him/her sit through an hour of junior high army recruiters who talk about how great it is to learn gun skills and spread freedom.

[Ezlivin]

7. He deserves suspension - the assignment called for Cubism, not Constructivism!

No wonder our standards have dropped so far. If you can't expect your students to follow a simple assignment to "draw in the Cubist style" then we might as well give up our iPods and iPhones.

[SteveM]

13. You mean that was social realism?

[-..__...]

9. If he had drawn a red circle around it with a slash across it...

he probably would have gotten a gold star sticky and accolades from the school administration... mustn't upset/frighten/disturb the hive mind.