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Back in December I wrote about the parents of two high school students who were suing their daughters’ school for suspending them from the cheerleading squad after administrators acquired nude cellphone photos of them.
The students say they never distributed the photos. Though the pictures were circulating widely in the school without the students’ knowledge or permission, none of the students who forwarded or received the photos were ever punished.
In their lawsuit, the families say that the school allowed more school officials to view the photos than was necessary, that they did not conduct a proper investigation of the distribution of the photos, and that they failed to report the incident to the police. (The parents themselves filed a police report on the incident after they learned of it.)
That’s the story as it stood in December. I did some follow-up research this week, and here’s what I found:
The Peoria, Arizona Unified School District will let gay eighth grader Chris Quintanilla wear a “Rainbows Are Gay” wristband to school.
As we reported last month, Quintanilla’s principal instructed him to remove the wristband when he saw him wearing it in a school hallway.
The wristband ban was apparently part of a larger pattern of behavior on the principal’s part. According to Quintanilla’s mother Natali, when she expressed concern that her son was being harassed at school for being gay, the principal told her that he wouldn’t be a target “if he didn’t put it out there the way he does.”
But the ACLU is now claiming victory, saying that the district “has assured the American Civil Liberties Union that it will no longer prevent [Quintanilla] from wearing [the] wristband at school.”
The district, for its part, says the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. Why it took them more than a month to clear it up remains unclear.
Kevin Bondelli of the Young Democrats is exploring what he calls the Progressive Youth Movement in what he says “will most likely be a large series” of blogposts “entitled ‘Lessons from Sociopolitical Movements.'” It’s an exciting project, and I’m looking forward to seeing where he takes it.
I do, though, have some questions.
Last month I wrote about a DA threatening high school students with child porn prosecutions for taking photos of themselves on their cell phones.
Now comes word of another prosecutor abusing his authority in a teen “sexting” case, this time harassing a high school administrator.
The story starts in March 2008: Ting-Yi Oei, an assistant principal in Virginia, is investigating sexting at his school. He confiscates an underwear snap from a student’s cellphone. He can’t identify the person in the photo, so he reports to his principal and closes the investigation.
When he suspends that student for an unrelated offense a couple of weeks later, the student’s mother calls the cops.
Prosecutors investigate, charge him with failure to report child abuse. That charge isn’t going anywhere, because he made a full report to his principal. So they charge him with child pornography. They delay informing him of the charges so they can have him arrested at school on his first day back after summer vacation.
The media run stories, with his photo, saying he’s been arrested for child porn. He’s placed on leave. Television news crews stalk him. Prosecutors press him to resign. He racks up a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in legal bills.
Finally, three weeks ago — even months after his arrest, and nearly a year after Oei first talked to the cops — a judge throws the charges out, finding Oei has broken no laws.
Today would have been Hugh Thompson’s 66th birthday.
Hugh Thompson was a 24-year-old helicopter pilot in the US Army in March 1968 when he flew a mission over the town of My Lai in Vietnam.
Providing aerial support to American troops operating in My Lai, Thompson and his crew discovered evidence that US soldiers were massacring unarmed villagers, including children and the elderly. When Thompson spotted a group of eleven unarmed people — including several children — fleeing American soldiers, he landed his helicopter between them and the troops. As he got out of the helicopter, he ordered his gunner to shoot the American soldiers if the soldiers opened fire on the civilians.
Thompson was able to secure the evacuation of those eleven, and as he was flying back to base to report on what he had seen, his gunner spotted and rescued an eight-year-old boy from a drainage ditch in which as many as a hundred people — including his mother and his younger sister and brother — lay dead.
When Thompson returned to base, he was able to convince a high-ranking officer to order a cease fire.
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