Fort Bend school trustees put off video game appeal

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Fort Bend school trustees put off video game appeal
Board lacks a quorum to consider high school senior's case
SUGAR LAND — A special school board meeting called to hear the appeal of a student disciplined for playing a violent computer game involving his high school was canceled when four board members stayed away.
The Fort Bend Independent School District trustees who did not attend said the meeting circumvented the district's disciplinary process.
Two trustees said they called the meeting because school district officials overreacted when the Clements High School student was punished. Board members Stan Magee and Ken Bryant said the special meeting could have expedited the resolution of the case.
Magee said district officials went overboard when the 17-year-old boy was suspended from school and placed in the M.R. Wood Alternative Education Center.
"I think we overreacted as a result of the Virginia Tech ordeal," Magee said Tuesday.
But a district spokeswoman said school officials cannot afford to ignore anything involving school-based violence.
"This goes back to Columbine. Ever since that horrid incident took place schools today have to take every incident that is reported very seriously," Fort Bend ISD spokeswoman Mary Ann Simpson said. "And they have to impress upon students how serious this type of thing is. We can't joke about things or take things lightly anymore."

Clements High depicted

Simpson said that on April 17, the day after the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 dead, Clements High School officials learned a student had been playing Counterstrike, an Internet-based shooting game. The locale of the shootings depicted on this student's game were the hallways of Clements High School. School district police investigated the report and questioned the student at school and then visited his home. The student's parents gave police permission to search the 12th-grader's room and computer. Simpson said police determined no criminal charges were warranted but that disciplinary action was.
Simpson said because of the violent nature of the game and because the actions had taken place in a computer-generated rendition of the high school, official consider the matter to be very serious.
"This was nothing to kid around about," she said.
Simpson said the student was transferred to an alternative school for the remainder of the school term.
The teen's parents appealed the decision. The school district has a four-step appeal process at the end of which a student can make a final appeal directly to the board of trustees.

Quick resolution sought

Magee said the process can often take more than a month and the parents wanted the matter resolved more quickly so that if the action were overturned, he could graduate with his senior class. Magee said that in at least two other cases, the board has heard appeals before the entire process has been played out. Magee said he thinks the district probably reacted too strongly to the situation.
"He did it at his house. Never took anything to school. Never wrote an ugly letter, never said anything strange to a student or a teacher, nothing," Magee said.
Bryant said police need to take situations like this seriously.
"I don't want to fault our police for trying to protect us. But once the evidence was found and looked at, I see no compelling reason why this child should not have been sent back to his original campus," Bryant said.
Bryant, Magee and board member Lisa Rickert appeared at district headquarters for the 5:30 p.m. Monday meeting. The other four, Steve Smelley, Sonal Bhuchar, Cynthia Knox and Laurie Caldwell, did not appear.
Since a quorum was not declared, the meeting was canceled.
Bhuchar was out of the country. Smelley, the board president, said the special meeting circumvents the normal disciplinary process and that is why he did not attend.
"Sometimes schools are criticized for overreacting to a situation," Simpson said. "Unfortunately, the days are past when we can just take things lightly and just say, 'Oh well, they were just joking.' "

I think going overboard like this is not making anyone safer.

[Samor]

hm, when I was younger some friends of mine were planning to model a map in Duke 3D after our high school, because it's kind of fun to remodel a place you know from real life, NOT to train for a massacre. They never did in the end, but that's besides the point.
I mean, they could start investigating any game designer that bases his levels on something realistic now.