How long has it been since my last post? Oh, heavens! Too long! I fear I might lose all of my readers and have to start anew.
Or not.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Yeetle Box - Too Violent for the Marines
Allen Lee from Cary, Illinois was about to become a Marine after signing enlistment papers this month. But the Marines are concerned Mr. Lee might just be too violent for the Marine Corp - the few, the proud, etc.
Mr. Lee wrote a violent, profanity-laced English essay that drew attention from the school and school district, resulting in pending criminal charges. Lee's recruiter told him Friday that the Marine Corps has discharged him from his contract, said Sgt. Luis R. Agostini, spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Station Chicago.
“Basically, he is no longer an applicant to become a Marine,” Agostini said. "You see, he's really violent. The Marine Corp prides itself on its non-violent stance."
Mr. Lee, a senior at the Chicago suburban school, Cary-Grove High School, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct after the principal turned his creative writing essay over to police.
“In light of recent events (at Virginia Tech), that is part of the context of what happened that makes the reaction all the more reasonable,” said Tom Carroll, first assistant state’s attorney in McHenry County. "This is just a simple matter of creativity gone wild. We need to get back to classic violence - Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Sylvia Plath."
The charges are a product of paranoia, born of the massacre of 32 students at Virginia Tech by a social outcast who then killed himself, said Mr. Lee's lawyer, Thomas Loizzo.
“Once the dust settles, once they look at this through clearer glasses, we think that the state will do the right thing and dismiss the charges,” Loizzo said.
The essay, written Monday, reads in part, “Blood, sex and booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s...t...a...b...puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did.”
Mr. Lee wrote a violent, profanity-laced English essay that drew attention from the school and school district, resulting in pending criminal charges. Lee's recruiter told him Friday that the Marine Corps has discharged him from his contract, said Sgt. Luis R. Agostini, spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Station Chicago.
“Basically, he is no longer an applicant to become a Marine,” Agostini said. "You see, he's really violent. The Marine Corp prides itself on its non-violent stance."
Mr. Lee, a senior at the Chicago suburban school, Cary-Grove High School, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct after the principal turned his creative writing essay over to police.
“In light of recent events (at Virginia Tech), that is part of the context of what happened that makes the reaction all the more reasonable,” said Tom Carroll, first assistant state’s attorney in McHenry County. "This is just a simple matter of creativity gone wild. We need to get back to classic violence - Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Sylvia Plath."
The charges are a product of paranoia, born of the massacre of 32 students at Virginia Tech by a social outcast who then killed himself, said Mr. Lee's lawyer, Thomas Loizzo.
“Once the dust settles, once they look at this through clearer glasses, we think that the state will do the right thing and dismiss the charges,” Loizzo said.
The essay, written Monday, reads in part, “Blood, sex and booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s...t...a...b...puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did.”
"Look," said Mr. Lee. "It says I didn't have sex with dead bodies. So, shouldn't I get an award or something? And it's written in iambic pentameter!"
"Be creative; there will be no judgment and no censorship,” Thomas Loizzo said. “There was never any warning from the teacher that if she determined the paper to be offensive, she would then pass it along to the authorities. My God, what has high school education come to if a young man cannot express his darkest thoughts without fear of great repercussions? How will our kids write grammatically correct suicide notes? When I have won this case, I'm going to spearhead a full investigation into what's going on in our grade schools."
School district spokesman Jeff Puma declined to discuss the specifics of the essay or Lee’s future, citing privacy concerns and fear of legal action against him. “The essay was inappropriate in that it caused a question about safety,” Puma said. "This is not without precedent. Last year a student wrote an essay about automobile accidents, and we took the appropriate action of suspending her driver's license."
Lee wrote in a statement provided by his attorney that he has completed military entrance exams, including a psychiatric evaluation.
“If I’m qualified to defend the country, I believe I’m qualified to attend school,” he wrote. "Or maybe it's, if I'm old enough to vote, I'm old enough to write about sexual intercourse with dead bodies. No, wait! It's: if I'm qualified to write a gross essay, I'm qualified to pile up nude bodies at Gitmo. Yea, that's it."
School district spokesman Jeff Puma declined to discuss the specifics of the essay or Lee’s future, citing privacy concerns and fear of legal action against him. “The essay was inappropriate in that it caused a question about safety,” Puma said. "This is not without precedent. Last year a student wrote an essay about automobile accidents, and we took the appropriate action of suspending her driver's license."
Lee wrote in a statement provided by his attorney that he has completed military entrance exams, including a psychiatric evaluation.
“If I’m qualified to defend the country, I believe I’m qualified to attend school,” he wrote. "Or maybe it's, if I'm old enough to vote, I'm old enough to write about sexual intercourse with dead bodies. No, wait! It's: if I'm qualified to write a gross essay, I'm qualified to pile up nude bodies at Gitmo. Yea, that's it."
Monday, April 23, 2007
Yeetle Box - Winset, Go!
Professor Nicholas Winset was fired from his job at Emmanual College, a Catholic college in Boston, after leading his class in a discussion about the shootings at Virginia Tech.
Professor Winset, professor of Financial Accounting, pretended to shoot some students during the discussion at Emmanuel College. One student then pretended to shoot Winset to show that the gunman could have been stopped if someone else had been armed - a long-standing module within the Financial Accounting field.
"The way this works," said Winset, "is that I point my finger at a random student and shout 'RAT-A-TAT-TAT'! He points his finger at me and shouts 'BLAM! BLAM!' I fall to the floor. Very dramatic. Gets the point across that if more people, not fewer people, carried guns, the Virginia Tech tragedy would have been averted...and PRONTO!"
Winset says the school is stifling free speech by dismissing him. In an interview yesterday, Winset also decried media coverage of the massacre, saying, “Just because everyone is portraying this as the national tragedy of the year doesn’t mean it is. More people died of AIDS today” than in the massacre, he said.
Professor Winset also manages and AIDS awareness class where he and another student perform coitus, after which they pretend to be HIV positive. The rest of the class points their fingers and screams 'POW!'.
"It's a good way to raise awareness."
Winset said his skits are meant to be a tenuous segue into an assignment asking students to examine whether the massacre has had an impact on the financial markets, which have remained healthy in tragedy’s aftermath. He said he wanted students to see that intense media focus on a story does not always mean it has the same relevance to the markets or to society in general.”
Administrators at the college apparently did not appreciate Winset’s classroom message. They quickly fired him via a one-page letter delivered by courier yesterday.
“You are hereby directed not to enter the College campus or any College owned property at any time for any reason,” the letter states. “Also enclosed . . .is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts form, How to File for Unemployment Insurance Benefits.”
A spokeswoman for Emmanuel College, Molly Honan, would not give the college’s rationale for firing Winset. She said the school’s policy is not to comment on personnel issues - even in spite of the obvious.
Winset, 37, of Newton called the college’s decision to fire him “pathetic,” and said it will have a “chilling effect” on professors’ willingness to engage in open discussions about controversial issues.
“A classroom is supposed to be a place for academic exploration,” he said. “It’s just gotten so politically correct. It’s sad that we have come to this point.”
One student tolds the Boston Globe that most of her classmates didn't seem to find Winset's demonstration offensive. "I mean, what's the big deal? Financial accounting is boring."
Professor Winset, professor of Financial Accounting, pretended to shoot some students during the discussion at Emmanuel College. One student then pretended to shoot Winset to show that the gunman could have been stopped if someone else had been armed - a long-standing module within the Financial Accounting field.
"The way this works," said Winset, "is that I point my finger at a random student and shout 'RAT-A-TAT-TAT'! He points his finger at me and shouts 'BLAM! BLAM!' I fall to the floor. Very dramatic. Gets the point across that if more people, not fewer people, carried guns, the Virginia Tech tragedy would have been averted...and PRONTO!"
Winset says the school is stifling free speech by dismissing him. In an interview yesterday, Winset also decried media coverage of the massacre, saying, “Just because everyone is portraying this as the national tragedy of the year doesn’t mean it is. More people died of AIDS today” than in the massacre, he said.
Professor Winset also manages and AIDS awareness class where he and another student perform coitus, after which they pretend to be HIV positive. The rest of the class points their fingers and screams 'POW!'.
"It's a good way to raise awareness."
Winset said his skits are meant to be a tenuous segue into an assignment asking students to examine whether the massacre has had an impact on the financial markets, which have remained healthy in tragedy’s aftermath. He said he wanted students to see that intense media focus on a story does not always mean it has the same relevance to the markets or to society in general.”
Administrators at the college apparently did not appreciate Winset’s classroom message. They quickly fired him via a one-page letter delivered by courier yesterday.
“You are hereby directed not to enter the College campus or any College owned property at any time for any reason,” the letter states. “Also enclosed . . .is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts form, How to File for Unemployment Insurance Benefits.”
A spokeswoman for Emmanuel College, Molly Honan, would not give the college’s rationale for firing Winset. She said the school’s policy is not to comment on personnel issues - even in spite of the obvious.
Winset, 37, of Newton called the college’s decision to fire him “pathetic,” and said it will have a “chilling effect” on professors’ willingness to engage in open discussions about controversial issues.
“A classroom is supposed to be a place for academic exploration,” he said. “It’s just gotten so politically correct. It’s sad that we have come to this point.”
One student tolds the Boston Globe that most of her classmates didn't seem to find Winset's demonstration offensive. "I mean, what's the big deal? Financial accounting is boring."
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