Klarinet Archive - Posting 000054.txt from 2002/07

From: "Kevin Callahan" <kionon@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Music vs. drug testing
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 2002 20:31:41 -0400

<snip>

> Things are very wrong in such a school. Or in your attitude. You should
> be thinking more in terms of the teachers and administration protecting
YOU
> from harm.

Explain what is wrong with my attitude, I'll listen, though I may not agree.
I rarely worry about my fellow students cutting off my means of expression,
and when I do, I do expect the teachers and administration to do something
about. I did however, worry about about the administration using the same
arguments as you to curb what I could and couldn't do. Some things were just
silly too. While I have mentioned there are things that I thought were silly
that I have found to not be so now that I'm older, there are still things I
know were silly. Such as trying (quite unsuccessfully) to stop me from
speaking about anime of all things in my private conversations. The middle
of class is one thing, private conversations are another. While they never
did this again and my last two years in high school were safe, successful,
and harrasment free, I still found myself looking over my shoulder, not
afraid of a student with a gun, but of an administrator with a rule book.

>Of course, if you are one of the perpetrators...

Which I am not....

> Open campuses are a ridiculous idea, supported, I think, mostly by the
> local fast-food establishments.

I agree, and I never suggested otherwise. I was just speaking about how it
can feel to be, essentially, locked in a building with no way to leave. I
don't know about other states, but in Texas, you will be arrested if you try
to leave and physically dragged back. This I do have a problem with. It adds
to the idea of a school as a prison where the students are inmates waiting
to happen. While the feelings may be faulty, it would be ill advised to
ignore them. I'm hardly though only one who has felt this way. Granted, most
children at one time complain about school as a prison, and many times thos
children are wrong. My fear, however, is that some of those complaints are
warranted, even if that's the minority of the complaints.

> > > > > The only "right" I want to see taken away is the "right" of
criminals
> >to
> > > > > break the law and get away with it.
> > > >
> > > >Eloquently put, but impossible to achieve. There will always be
crime,
> >and
> > > >there will always be those who can get away with it.
> > >
> > > You still have to try. Our reach should exceed our grasp.
> >
> >Yes, but not by cutting into civil liberties, that makes us no better
than
> >those we wish to, rightly, catch.
>
> And thus we return to the question of whether a drug test violates your
> civil liberties. I say "no."
>

We do, and I say, "Yes." Wow, that sums up the entire thread, doesn't it? :P

Kevin Callahan

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