Story Archive

Radical

“Well, that looks like a pistol!” said a student at Oberlin (La.) High School as he looked at another student’s work. In math class. The other student had drawn a √, or square root sign, which doesn’t look much like a pistol. But other students heard the comment, made less than a week after the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. Then, the “ol’ morphing of information” — aka the “telephone game” — took hold, “morphing” the comment into rumors that a mass shooting was being planned at the school, said Allen Parish Sheriff Doug Hebert. Sheriff’s deputies searched the home of the unidentified student who made the comment, but found no evidence of weapons or intent to go on a murderous rampage. “He did not commit a crime,” Sheriff Hebert said. “He did not commit anything remotely criminal, nothing to remotely suggest any intent to do actual harm.” Still, in response to the incident, the student who made the comment has been suspended pending an expulsion hearing, and the school board set a new policy: any student who “talks about guns” or school shootings will be removed from school, the sheriff will be sent to do a “home visit” with the family, and “we’re going to conduct a threat assessment on the student,” said Allen Parish School District Superintendent Michael Doucet. (RC/KATC Lafayette) ...Which raises the overreaction to ∞.