Kicked out of school because of counterstrike map

[tongue_of_colicab]

Dont know if this has been posted already in a VT topic but I just read on a dutch site. I'll try to do a small translation.

A 17 year old chinese looking student from Clements High School in Texas has been kicked out of school after the schoolboard (that is the right word?) found out he had made a CS map wich looked a bit like Clements high. The schoolboard concluded that he must had a screw loose in his head and called police. The police searched his pc but they didnt find anything out of the ordinairy. Still schoolboard though they needed to set the example and kicked the guy out of school and he now is at M. R. Wood Alternative Education Center, as school for ''hard to raise kids''.

My jaw dropped to the floor when I read this. Some kid gets kicked out of school for nothing, and if that isnt the worse enough he now is at some school wich he doesnt even belong in. Talk about a way to potentianally raise someone dangerous. Whats even more fun is that the VT killer didnt even play videogames. The only crazy dangerous people are the ones who decided this kid must be crazy. IMO this is close to what the NAZI's did. Lock away someone for no reason and than pat yourself on the chest how you improved socity.

How the hell can something like this happen? can you just kick out and put away someone that easily?

edit: English version: http://www.1pstart.com/student-arrested-for-suspected-terrorist-activity/

.They arrested him,. Chen said of FBISD police, .and also went to the house to search.. The Lin family consented to the search, and a hammer was found in the boy.s room, which he used to fix his bed, because it wasn.t in good shape, Chen said. He indicated police seized the hammer as a potential weapon.

This just makes me cry. I must be a potential mass murderer with all the tools on my room

 

[Dresden]

Sickening. Absolutely sickening. A friend of mine did the exact same thing back when I was in highschool and nothing happened. In fact the map was great. Did that make him a potential threat to the school? No. It's a matter of bad timing and idiotic, overly PC school boards. Here's an idea: If you want to play by those rules, how about you take away the rap music constantly degrading women, instigating violence and drug use and in the ears of 90% of your students...

 

[RussSchultz]

And yet if Cho had done this, we'd have people screaming "LOOK! I told you he was a whacko! The signs were there!"

 

[Sxotty]

And yet if Cho had done this, we'd have people screaming "LOOK! I told you he was a whacko! The signs were there!"

I got sent to alternative school when I was younger. A friend brought a boy scout huntsman to school that I had left at his house. He handed it to me and this whacko teacher saw. This was just bad luck as it was not in class, but on a stairwell before school. I put it in my pocket without opening any blade or tool, but the teacher made a complaint and I ended up at the principals office. It was policy that any knife means you go to alternative school so there I was.

It is mainly because the teacher had no idea about the idea of being intelligent. Right after I got back a kid in a skit at school whipped out a lock buck knife with a lock blade and nothing happened because it was in a different teachers classroom. She just told him later that he should not carry a pocket knife, especially whipping out the blade...

They told me I could bring my grades up without the teachers bothering me... speaks well for the disciplinarians view of the quality of teachers. I was also getting all A's before I left

 

[Dresden]

And yet if Cho had done this, we'd have people screaming "LOOK! I told you he was a whacko! The signs were there!"

I think Cho's screenplays alone he wrote were enough to raise a few red flags. For some odd reason this story reminds me a lot of that story that was posted about a month back regarding the teacher receiving 40+ years in jail for students accessing a computer in her room and visiting pornographic sites. Juries and schoolboards alike are blind and idiotic when it comes to virtually anything online related. They automatically put two and two together, the school and the setting it was designed under, and then come up with some bullshit conclusion. My friend also modeled a local restaurant, did that mean that we all had intentions to kick down their doors both guns blazing?

 

[Bigus Dickus]

I thought of making a UT map of my university, but never had enough time to learn to use the level editor. Seems like a pretty common thought for someone who likes FPS type games and custom maps... make something familiar.

And Cho didn't need anymore red flags... he displayed dozens, and plenty of people knew. Unfortunately our system prevents us from helping people like him even if we know.

 

[DudeMiester]

I know in my city, the Catholic school board has a total ban on all electronic equipment, except non-graphing calculators. Essentially, if you can play music, games, view images or communicate with it, it's banned. It's a wonder they don't remove the telephones, lol.

Anyways, via Facebook (Toronto and the surrounding area, which includes my city, is the largest demographic on there), nearly 3000 students joined a group protesting the ban. It was originally co-founded by a friend of mine, and soon had a number of student council members from different school as officers. They were even planning a protest at the board office. It was remarkably successful.

However, my friend saw the writing on the wall, and left the group soon after it was formed. Unfortunately, the other officers were not so perceptive, and in the end, one high school's entire student council was suspended. These were all A+ students with no prior disciplinary record, but they had to be crucified to set an absurd example. Such is the insanity of education.

Thankfully, the community at large had more sanity. After voluminous complaints by their parents, PTA groups and having the story published in the local paper, the school board relented. The students were unsuspended as they should be, but of course, the ban remains.

Still, I find it's not so much that the bureaucratic figures involved are themselves colossally idiotic, even if they are certainly not bright lights. Rather, the board and other such organizations seem to suffer from a sort of institutionalized stupidity. What starts out as a simple procedure, one any rational person would adhere to, soon develops into an intellectually crippling policy framework.

People grow to love the rules so much, since they give direction and purpose, they are loathe to act against them, even when they know the rules are far from perfect. Instead, they develop more policy to reassure themselves, thereby cocooning their insecurity within a shell of red tape. This, of course, leads to the decay and decline of all those involved.

Ironically, the existence of the psychological flaw is, itself, probably a flaw of the educational system. In an ideal world, every child would be properly assessed for learning and emotional issues, then placed into a effective corrective plan. That way they don't end up like the neurotic politicians and bureaucrats at the school board.

 

[Sobek]

For some odd reason this story reminds me a lot of that story that was posted about a month back regarding the teacher receiving 40+ years in jail for students accessing a computer in her room and visiting pornographic sites.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa...WHAT?!

She was given 40+ years in Jail because some idiot kiddies were looking at porno in the interwebs in her class? How the hell do you get 40 years for THAT? It's 'natural' for these kids to be looking at that kind of stuff, and you can't magically monitor every single screen simultaneously and block every single possible little iota of pornographic material from seeping through.

Christ, that's just pathetic.

 

[Dresden]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa...WHAT?!

She was given 40+ years in Jail because some idiot kiddies were looking at porno in the interwebs in her class? How the hell do you get 40 years for THAT? It's 'natural' for these kids to be looking at that kind of stuff, and you can't magically monitor every single screen simultaneously and block every single possible little iota of pornographic material from seeping through.

Christ, that's just pathetic.

Yeh man. I actually read the story here so it's floating around somewhere. It had more to do with her being a substitute who was informed by a superior to by NO means shut off his computer due to some sort of errors. She stepped out, came back and the kids had accessed some sort of spyware website that, seeing as the computer had NO internet defenses and was a virtual spyware mill, closing one window just prompted another. She was fired. Fined. And the court wouldn't hear it. Last I left off it was a 40 year sentence.

 

[Tagrineth]

People are stupid.

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

I know in my city, the Catholic school board has a total ban on all electronic equipment, except non-graphing calculators. Essentially, if you can play music, games, view images or communicate with it, it's banned. It's a wonder they don't remove the telephones, lol.

Anyways, via Facebook (Toronto and the surrounding area, which includes my city, is the largest demographic on there), nearly 3000 students joined a group protesting the ban. It was originally co-founded by a friend of mine, and soon had a number of student council members from different school as officers. They were even planning a protest at the board office. It was remarkably successful.

However, my friend saw the writing on the wall, and left the group soon after it was formed. Unfortunately, the other officers were not so perceptive, and in the end, one high school's entire student council was suspended. These were all A+ students with no prior disciplinary record, but they had to be crucified to set an absurd example. Such is the insanity of education.

Thankfully, the community at large had more sanity. After voluminous complaints by their parents, PTA groups and having the story published in the local paper, the school board relented. The students were unsuspended as they should be, but of course, the ban remains.
Still, I find it's not so much that the bureaucratic figures involved are themselves colossally idiotic, even if they are certainly not bright lights. Rather, the board and other such organizations seem to suffer from a sort of institutionalized stupidity. What starts out as a simple procedure, one any rational person would adhere to, soon develops into an intellectually crippling policy framework.

People grow to love the rules so much, since they give direction and purpose, they are loathe to act against them, even when they know the rules are far from perfect. Instead, they develop more policy to reassure themselves, thereby cocooning their insecurity within a shell of red tape. This, of course, leads to the decay and decline of all those involved.

Ironically, the existence of the psychological flaw is, itself, probably a flaw of the educational system. In an ideal world, every child would be properly assessed for learning and emotional issues, then placed into a effective corrective plan. That way they don't end up like the neurotic politicians and bureaucrats at the school board.

Oh god your school really was horrible eh? Seriously ridiculous. Anyways yeah I agree with the previous post lol I kid getting expelled for a cs map? My friend and I made a cs 1.3 map of our elementary school in grade 8... nothing happened (the map did suck though lol). It's just ridiculous trying to blame these sorts of acts on things so inconsequential.

 

[Neeyik]

Thankfully there are opposite cases - the last school I worked at (before becoming a full-time nerd) was private and RC but they fully supported me running a weekly video games design club, where we used Unreal Editor and GameMaker to knock out all kinds of stuff; plus we had odd deathmatch running too.

I sometimes despair about schools though - they're quite happy to make Drama lessons obligatory in many places in the UK and we all know just how important that is. And yet, a multi-billion pound industry that requires intelligent and creative people to work in it gets totally ignored at the secondary level. Almost certainly down to the likes of the Daily Telegraph and their "Boris Johnson" attitude towards anything vaguely computer related.

 

[soylent]

I know in my city, the Catholic school board has a total ban on all electronic equipment, except non-graphing calculators. Essentially, if you can play music, games, view images or communicate with it, it's banned. It's a wonder they don't remove the telephones, lol.

Anyways, via Facebook (Toronto and the surrounding area, which includes my city, is the largest demographic on there), nearly 3000 students joined a group protesting the ban. It was originally co-founded by a friend of mine, and soon had a number of student council members from different school as officers. They were even planning a protest at the board office. It was remarkably successful.

However, my friend saw the writing on the wall, and left the group soon after it was formed. Unfortunately, the other officers were not so perceptive, and in the end, one high school's entire student council was suspended. These were all A+ students with no prior disciplinary record, but they had to be crucified to set an absurd example. Such is the insanity of education.

Thankfully, the community at large had more sanity. After voluminous complaints by their parents, PTA groups and having the story published in the local paper, the school board relented. The students were unsuspended as they should be, but of course, the ban remains.

Still, I find it's not so much that the bureaucratic figures involved are themselves colossally idiotic, even if they are certainly not bright lights. Rather, the board and other such organizations seem to suffer from a sort of institutionalized stupidity. What starts out as a simple procedure, one any rational person would adhere to, soon develops into an intellectually crippling policy framework.

People grow to love the rules so much, since they give direction and purpose, they are loathe to act against them, even when they know the rules are far from perfect. Instead, they develop more policy to reassure themselves, thereby cocooning their insecurity within a shell of red tape. This, of course, leads to the decay and decline of all those involved.

Ironically, the existence of the psychological flaw is, itself, probably a flaw of the educational system. In an ideal world, every child would be properly assessed for learning and emotional issues, then placed into a effective corrective plan. That way they don't end up like the neurotic politicians and bureaucrats at the school board.

These people were running your school board?

 

[epicstruggle]

Yeh man. I actually read the story here so it's floating around somewhere. It had more to do with her being a substitute who was informed by a superior to by NO means shut off his computer due to some sort of errors. She stepped out, came back and the kids had accessed some sort of spyware website that, seeing as the computer had NO internet defenses and was a virtual spyware mill, closing one window just prompted another. She was fired. Fined. And the court wouldn't hear it. Last I left off it was a 40 year sentence.

She hasn't been sentenced yet. There is still hope that her sentence is overturned in the Superior court next week. For more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Amero

 

[Dresden]

She hasn't been sentenced yet. There is still hope that her sentence is overturned in the Superior court next week. For more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Amero

That's good. I was really upset to hear that nobody would listen to her during her trial. One of the many reasons I'm not involved in Criminal Justice anymore is how completely idiotic juries can be sometimes. Especially when it comes down to technology. Merely mentioning a computer and you've already lost half your audience.

Regardless. If you presented a jury with this situation we have here concerning the map, they wouldn't hear it, regardless of the individual's criminal background or level of mental stability. It's just bad timing. Provided the same thing happened 4 years ago, people would think nothing of it.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

this is why god invented lawyers.

Sue em all

 

[vazel]

this is why god invented lawyers.

Sue em all

I always assumed the other guy invented them.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I always assumed the other guy invented them.

I think the perception of who created them depends if your the guy charging $500 an hour or not

 

[ANova]

People are stupid.

Couldn't...agree...more...

 

[epicstruggle]

Update on the porn pop up lady:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/05/18/amero-sentencing-delayed-yet-again/
Her sentencing was delayed.