The Madness Continues

I posted something a few days ago regarding three seventh-graders from a school in VA who were suspended for several months for the 'crime' of playing with airsoft guns on private property.

Madness.

Now we have this bit of insanity from Rhode Island.

Yet another student has landed in trouble for having something that represents a gun, but isn’t actually anything like a real gun.

This time, the student is 12-year-old Joseph Lyssikatos, a student in advanced math who had perfect attendance last year. The seventh-grader made the mistake of bringing a ridiculously small, silver keychain shaped like a gun to Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry, R.I, reports local NBC affiliate WJAR.

After another kid picked it up and displayed it to other students, a teacher intervened and impounded the keychain.

Apparently fearing that the roughly quarter-sized hunk of cheap metal was somehow a danger to life and limb, school officials sprang into action. They suspended Lyssikatos for three days. He has also been banned from an upcoming class field trip.

This is the keychain that caused all the trouble. Looks pretty threatening, doesn't it?

Lyssikatos noted that he got the tiny keychain at a local arcade with go-karts and such in exchange for 25 tickets.

School officials have clammed up concerning the incident, according to WJAR. The school released a brief statement saying: “Because this is a student discipline issue, we cannot comment on any specifics.”

Someone called a behavioral specialist at Feinstein Middle School informed the boy’s parents of the suspension. The parents say the principal and the school district superintendent won’t return phone calls.

The boy’s father, Keith Bonanno, claimed on WPRO radio that the behavioral specialist told him his son was “lucky that he didn’t get suspended for 10 days, or even worse expelled.”

The kid gets good grades, has perfect attendance, and there are no indications of disciplinary problems. Does any of that mean anything?

Hell no.

All that matters is that he showed up with some trinket he won at an arcade that scares the bejeebers out of the cretins running his school, who are too cowardly to explain their actions to anyone - or even speak with the parents.

And let's not forget the 'behavioral specialist.' When I was a kid the 'behavioral specialist' was the vice-principal. He was the equivalent of the XO in a military unit, responsible for administration and discipline. The biggest difference was that our vice-principal, unlike an XO, carried a paddle and administered 'licks' as needed to keep the students in line.

It worked pretty well. We didn't have any shootings or knifings during the entire twelve years I was in school.

Sometimes the old ways are best...