A student in a Chicago suburb has been arrested for writing an essay that allegedly frightened his teacher.
No, it was not the grammar or word choices; it was the content.
Told to express emotion for a creative-writing class, high school senior Allen Lee penned an essay so disturbing to his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct, officials said Wednesday.
Lee, 18, a straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with the misdemeanor for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.
Neither police nor the school would release a copy of the essay written Monday. School officials declined to say whether Lee had any previous disciplinary problems, but said he was an excellent student. Authorities said Lee had never been in trouble with the police.
The charge against Lee comes as schools in the Chicago area and across the country wrestle with how to react in the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech. . . .
"The teacher was alarmed and disturbed by the content," [Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio] said.
The teen’s father said he understood concerns about violence but not why a creative-writing exercise resulted in charges against his son.
"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said Albert Lee. But he added, "I don’t see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions.
The teacher should be fired for giving such a lame writing assignment, as well as for ratting the kid out to the cops.
This is always the way of things in our society in recent years. Let everything go wild, and then lurch in precisely the opposite direction. Let a seriously disturbed young man roams the streets and buy guns and then kill a bunch of people, then arrest a boy for writing a class essay.
And then start the process over.
This is what happens in a society that does not have an agreed-upon set of shared values and a moral code based on them.