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Teen turns in gun, gets expelled in return
Filed under: Teens, Health & Safety: Babies, Day Care & Education
In a stunning example of how no good deed goes unpunished, thirteen-year-old Ryan Morgan has been expelled from Troy Middle School because he turned in a gun he found in the bathroom. Ryan says he and a friend found the pellet gun in the school's bathroom and put it in his pocket and turned it in to an assistant principal. The school's principal and the district's superintendent decided to expel him for it, offering an "alternative school" as an option.The boy's parents are outraged, saying that he did what he thought was best to keep his fellow students safe. Now, it seems that Ryan is going to be home-schooled instead. "They still did what they wanted to do," said Audrey Morgan, the boy's mother. "They have expelled my son. They just looked up another word for it."
Apparently, the state's school code requires that any student who uses, possesses, controls or transfers a weapon or look-alike weapon should be expelled for at least one calendar year. "In this case, the board's final motion was to have the student assigned to homebound study instead of expulsion, where no educational services would be offered at all," said assistant superintendent Joanne Schochat.
While I don't know all the details, it sure seems like this is a case of a school district blindly following the letter, rather than the spirit of the law. Perhaps it would indeed have been a better idea to leave the gun where it was and simply notify a principal that it was there, but certainly the punishment seems a bit harsh for that. This is not a case where a kid brought a gun to school nor did he even play with it or show it to anyone before turning it in. Ryan Morgan, it seems, was simply trying to do the right thing. And now he's paying the price for it.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
12-15-2006 @ 12:49PM
Ginny said...That's just ridiculous. It's the same type of thing that keeps good samaritans from intervening when they see trouble.
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12-15-2006 @ 1:21PM
Christine said...Um.. I have to say that schools are taking the zero tollerance to the wrong extreme. Expelling kids for these things.. but Im willing to be that bullying is still having a blind eye turned to it....
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12-15-2006 @ 1:44PM
Stephanie said...That's the trouble with zero tolerance policies; they don't allow common sense exceptions to the rules.
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12-15-2006 @ 3:06PM
Messed Up Mama said...While it may have been better for the boy to report the gun while leaving it where he found it, 13 year olds don't often think things through that far. He saw something that was a danger to his classmates and did the first thing he thought of to insure their safety; he took it to the authorities who would know what to do with it. He is then expelled, for doing what he thought was right. So, I'm sure, in his mind and the minds of the other children in the school, the message is "Don't do anything about a problem you may see, because YOU could get in trouble."
The assistant principal should have taken the gun to the principal who should have thanked the boy, suggested that he should leave something like that where he found it and report it to the office if he should ever find a weapon in school again. It didn't have to go as far as it did, and offering an alternative school is stupid. What is the message here? "You deserve an education, we just don't want your kind in our schools.”? His kind being, the kind of student who would try to do the right thing? Ridiculous.
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12-15-2006 @ 2:13PM
1L said...This is crazy. But I have a similar experience. My daughter was accused of doing drugs during class 2 years ago (she is a senior in high school now). She had never been in any trouble and is a strait A student. I do not know who went to the office and told this story because that person's identity is protected.
My daughter was searched, questioned, and the police were called. No drugs were found, she denied the accusation, and the police did not believe she was under the influence and left.
She was 'sentenced' to in-school suspension for 5 days and 15 days of alternative school. Without any kind of proof! They sited the 'zero tolerance' rules.
Needless to say, I was not happy and immediately took her to the Doctor and had her drug tested (about 4 hours after she supposedly snorted some kind of white powder). She served 2 days of in-school suspension before the test results came back and proved that she was not doing any kind of drug. But the school would not back down and still insisted that she complete the suspension and go to alternative school...WHAT A CROCK!!!!!
Needless to say I was still not happy and had to threaten a law suit and the news media before they came to their senses and reinstated her. But I'm still out the $100 for the Dr/Lab bills...
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12-15-2006 @ 9:04PM
ann adams said...If it had been a real gun, what then.
The two kids leave it there while they seek out the authorities. Two more kids come in, start messing around, one shoots the other.
The first two kids have nothing to concern themselves with. They followed the rules.
Right.
Reply