Student Suspended for Call to Mom in Iraq
The Associated Press
Friday, May 6, 2005; 12:23 PM
COLUMBUS, Ga. — A high school student was suspended for 10 days for refusing to end a mobile phone call with his mother, a soldier serving in Iraq, school officials said.
The 10-day suspension was issued because Kevin Francois was “defiant and disorderly” and was imposed in lieu of an arrest, Spencer High School assistant principal Alfred Parham said.
The confrontation Wednesday began after the 17-year-old junior got a call at lunchtime from his mother, Sgt. 1st Class Monique Bates, who left in January for a one-year tour with the 203rd Forward Support Battalion.
WashPost: AP
Okay kids, for our exercise today, tell me what’s wrong with the headline.
Sounds like Alfred needs to go to Iraq and see what defiant and disorderly is really all about. At the least Alfred needs to attend some sensitivity training on what it means when a child is separated from his mother and she is placed in a highly dangerous situation. If the kid is lucky he gets to talk to her once every ten days or so and maybe a few emails in between. I hope the kid fights like hell to be reinstated and I will make every effort to find this moron’s email address and see if we can help the kid out.
Well, the kid may have overreacted. But the headline is a slander.
my first thought about the ‘defiant and disorderly’ is what does that mean exactly..maybe the kid just said no I want to keep talking to Mom…but with these unempathetic authoritative types that could constitute a serious problem. You know obey me or else, since I can’t beat you I’ll purify you by suspending you or some such crap…then again I might get defiant and disorderly if I was talking to my mom also under the circumstances.
Have to wait and see I imagine what the whole story is but all in all sounds pretty goddam ignorant to me.
I think bushco is putting something in the drinking water to make susseptable people lose all logic/reasoning and empathy and I’m not kidding.
by the way-per your request I told my sister she had to get signed up here or else..even if she only logged on and lurked for awhile every day. Which she’s promised to do.
damn am I good or what, here is parham’s email address at the school.
aparham@mcsdga.net
and here is the Principal’s email address
orutledge@mcsdga.net
Her name is Olivia Rutledge
Lets start a grassroots campaign to help this kid and let this administrator know it is not ok to punish a kid who only wanted to talk to his mother.
hey, thanks for that email address. I am going to send off a nice, respectful email but want to know the point of this stupidity.
I see in the article that I guess it’s nice he was only suspended as the principal had the option of having him arrested but didn’t want to cause any undue hardship or some such shit to the mom?… As for the defiant and disorderly all it said was when taken to principals office the student used profanity.. a 17 year using profanity…gee what the fuck is the world coming to anyhow?
oh yeah, lets support the troops by not ever showing pictures of them on tv, honoring them when they come home, ban on funerals, etc etc and heaven forbid a kid could continue talking to his Mom for a bit longer who is in Iraq.
He wasn’t suspended for calling his mother, as the headline wrongly states.
He was suspended for refusing to end the call and for being “defiant and disorderly.”
Besides being factually wrong, the headline also infers that the school officials (unfairly, cruelly) kept him from talking to his mom. In other words, they are not patriotic Americans.
Also: The headline was written, I suspect, in a calculated, manipulative move to get people to have an instant emotional reaction.
It played on the oft-repeated allegation that school officials and teachers (and their damn unions) are too liberal and don’t teach patriotism and the BIble.
damn unions indeed. lol
I just snapped off a very pleasant and meaningful email to the principal and hope to receive a reply. I suggest that as many people as possible let them know we support this kid because his mother is in such a dangerous environment.
he received a phone call FROM his mother, who thoughtfully chose the lunch period for the call.
He did not make a call TO his mother.
You win a cupcake Susan.
just send the cupcake to susanhu at earthlink dot net
WOOHOO!
the call to from, not to, the mother. You’d think they could get that much right, at least.
Hmph. Enjoy your cupcake.
Just shot an email off to both the idiots. These are the people responsible for our children’s educations? Phewt!
has a good point though, school regulations have gotten so controlling, it is more like prison in some schools, completely zero tolerance, uniforms, no hair ties, no sneakers, no t shirts, no outside communication during the day, I used to use the pay phone at luch all the time to call home or find out if I had to work in the afternoon.
They even used to have smoking sections, and people could leave to go to lunch. Not any more, many schools have gone so far overboard the experience is more like institutionalization. We have gone toward a nation obsessed with controlling and castrating our youth.
Kids feel anxiety, they have very little free time, no recess, they have to walk in straight lines (in a high school!) to get from one class to the next. I was at the school today and they had a big sign in the office IN GOD WE TRUST -OFFICIAL MOTTO OF THE UNITED STATES, established by congress…crazy. I couldn’t wait to leave.
Thank you for posting this. A million thank yous to everyone who emailed this school about this atrocity.
This kid doesn’t need another hard knock against him. And his mother already has her shoulders heavy with fighting in Iraq.
There are a couple problems with the story too.
If it was the end of the lunch period, it is important that kids get on to their classes. Staff are “herding” hundreds of kids, and can’t make exceptions for each.
Perhaps the boy didn’t explain to the staff member that he was talking to his mother, or where she was calling from?
Perhaps he has a history of being tardy to class or being uncooperative with staff or acting aggressively with staff?
The story also doesn’t say how long the two were talking before he was to return to class. If she’d just called, he could have reasonably said so, and asked if he could stand against the wall to finish the call.
There’s just too much we don’t know to judge the school staff.
susan,
not judging the staff, just asking that he be given some slack. I sent a very nice email to the principal to ask about what happened.
So let’s assume the kid was disrepectful. Let’s say he has a bit of a history of defying authority. Sounds like half the teenagaers in the United States, to me.
But playing devil’s advocate for a minute: When the school’s officials found out that he was talking to his mother, shouldn’t that mitigate the action the school feels obligated to take? A ten day suspension? IN LIEU OF AN ARREST?! Ridiculous. This problem could have easliy been solved with a few hours detention. That’s what they did to me when I used to act up.
What the fuck is going on out there, people? An arrest?
Sickening.
There’s very little give with the authoritarian types in schools … think Dr. Laura with a Mary Poppins facade.
I’m not willing to judge without more facts. But, from what I’ve seen in schools, the adults become unreasonably arbitrary because they have the power over the kids. And they tend to nitpick over very, very minor infractions — especially with a kid who has any history — those kids get targeted. And I’ll bet anything that this is a targeted kid.
Sounds resonable to me.. and I did judge the Vice principal, I called him a moron in an earlier post. my error.