Was it the 1970’s when Crystal Lake High School District 155 got into a fight over the length of student hair?
I smell a similar fight coming—with similar attendant metropolitan-wide publicity—over the criminality of Honor Roll Cary-Grove High School student Allen Lee’s essay.
One would expect the Northwest Herald to have the story (by Nick Swedberg) about Allen Lee’s “write whatever you want” essay and subsequent arrest on its front page, but, then Thursday it showed up on the front page of the Chicago Tribune in a story by Jeff Long and Carolyn Starks. It was on top in the left hand column with the headline:
sub headlined,
Not to be outdone, Friday’s Chicago Sun-Times headline asked,
Should this high school
senior be arrested for his
School work?
PART OF THE ESSAY 18-YEAR-OLD ALLEN LEE TURNED IN:
“as a teacher, don’t be surprised on inspiring the first CG shooting…blood, sex, booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, staf, stab, stab, s..t..a..b…puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P 90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did.”
The Sun-Times story on page three by Dan Rozek, Rosalind Rossi and Aaron M. Pallasch had this headline:
Essay arrest baffles experts
CARY | Say student’s creative writing violent, but suggest counseling, not arrest
The Northwest Herald posted most of the essay here. The comments below it don’t show an overwhelming amount of support for the arrest. The Chicago Tribune’s version is here. And, Tribune columnist Eric Zorn is running a poll in his blog article on the matter. The results you see were what I copied about 10:40 Friday night–almost 85% say Allen Lee should not have been arrested.
Neither Chicago paper thought a Crystal Lake Central High School’s message written on a boy’s bathroom about another Columbine and Virginia Tech to occur on Friday was worth a front page article, but Allen Lee’s essay rang bells all around.
I think the question will revolve around whether Allen Lee shouted, “Fire!” in a movie theater, to quote a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the limitations of the Freedom of Speech.
My guess is that it will be found that he did not.
Just as the boy with the long haircut won his case against District 155 several decades ago.
But, it was enough for the U.S. Marines to say, “No thank you.”
An early lesson that actions have consequences.
And, unfortunately, probably a defining moment in Allen Lee’s life.