Nicholas' mother LeAnn calls her son's punishment "absolutely ridiculous" saying he was just playing around and never said anything derogatory or anything about shooting anyone. "The kid across the table from him said it looked like a gun so he picked it up and started shooting it in the air," she said. Taylor said she learned of the incident when the school sent her a note saying her son was threatening other students. James Evans, spokesperson for the Rutherford County School District, said the boy isn't being punished because he had a piece of pizza shaped like a gun.
He's being punished because "some students reported he was making some threatening hand gestures, that he was shooting other kids at the table and they reported it to a teacher," according to Evans. He continued, "The student didn't tell him the truth about it so he got silent lunch for six days." Evans called the punishment minor but said the message is clear. "I realize some might say we are going overboard but the principal is just trying to use an abundance of caution and send the message that we don't play about guns and it's not something we joke around about," he said.
To that, Taylor said her son knows he shouldn't play with guns. "We don't have a gun in the house," she said. "He plays with light sabers. He's a big Star Wars fan." In addition to lunch at the silent table, Nicholas has spent time with the school resource officer learning about gun safety. Taylor said the school system has made it clear that if her son eats his pizza into the shape of a gun again and there is a similar occurrence, he will be suspended.
With news video.
3 comments:
Where did this take place? Oh, Tennesses. Never mind.
Lurker111
Seriously, this sounds like another "zero tolerance" policy used by administrators to avoid work, i.e., "administrating."
Luckily I'm all grown up, because I don't think I'd have made it thru one whole day of school these days.
I made gun sounds, pointed sticks at other kids, was in fights, was an active participant in "Friday flip-up days", had a kitchen knife in my lunch box, kissed girls, made naughty drawings, gloated when my Red Rover team WON and called the losers "losers", snapped the first bra straps I ever saw, had a shirt with an American flag on it, threw away my veggies at lunch, etc etc etc.
They'da had me in solitary at Alcatraz before I was 7.
But, I still think I turned out ok.
I and my peers certainly made guns out of popsicle sticks, twigs, and the like, then graduated to linoleum guns, nail guns, then zip guns firing .22cal rounds. Funnily enough, we never shot each other.
Now that we own real guns, we still don't go around shooting each other. We do wonder, though, about those who do.
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