Disciplined 8th-grader Jared Marcum returned to class on Monday after being suspended from school and arrested for refusing to change his NRA t-shirt at the request of one of his teachers. The shirt apparently pictured a firearm and the words “protect your rights.”
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However, he apparently hasn’t learned his lesson – assuming that there was even any lesson to be learned. Fresh off his suspension, Marcum showed up to school on Monday wearing the exact same NRA shirt that sparked what many have labeled “t-shirt control.”
There were also other people wearing matching shirts in support of Marcum, WOWK-TV reports.
“There’s a lot of people wearing this same exact shirt, showing great, great support and I really appreciate it,” the student said Monday before going to school.
Jared’s father, Allen Lardieri, says getting Jared back into school was his first priority.
We’ve completed the first leg of what we wanted to accomplish here,” Lardieri said. ”Now, we’re working on the next step, which is trying to clear his name.”
Lardieri says that he was informed by Logan City Police on Thursday that his son was facing two charges, obstructing an officer and disrupting the education process. However, Jared’s attorney Ben White says that wasn’t the police department’s call to make.
“He was arrested, he was put into handcuffs, he was removed from the school and brought to the Logan City Police Department,” White said. “Charges aren’t officially filed or brought until the prosecuting attorney’s signs off on them and they don’t do that willy nilly. They do that after a thorough investigation.”
That investigation is currently underway, according to authorities. Leading the investigation is juvenile prosecuting attorney Sabrina Deskins.
A student at Florida Atlantic University has charged that his professor in intercultural communications class told the whole class to write the name JESUS in bold letters on a piece of paper, then drop the papers and stomp all over them.
The alleged incident happened three weeks ago on the Davie, Florida campus of FAU, according to WPEC-TV.
Junior Ryan Rotela, a devout Mormon, is the student making the charge.
“Anytime you stomp on something it shows that you believe that something has no value,” he told the South Florida CBS affiliate. “So if you were to stomp on the word Jesus, it says that the word has no value.”
Some students stomped; others, including Rotela, didn’t. He said he told the instructor, Deandre Poole, that the assignment offended his religious convictions.
Two days later, the junior alleges, he went to an FAU school official to express his unease with the assignment.
The result? Rotela has been suspended from the class.
An FAU official defended the decision, telling WPEC that the Jesus-stomping was part of a classroom exercise from a textbook: “Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach, 5th Edition.”
Children at Park Elementary School went home with a letter today explaining there was a disruption in school. Seven year old Josh Welch, and his father, say the disruption lead to a two day suspension for the second grader in Brooklyn Park.
Academics are hard for Josh, who suffers from ADHD, but he excels in art class. It is Josh’s own creativity that may have gotten him into trouble.
At Park Elementary school, Josh was enjoying his breakfast pastry when he decided to try and shape it into a mountain.
Josh said, “It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it wasn’t.”
Josh takes full responsibly for trying to shape his breakfast pastry, but admits it was in innocent fun. He told FOX45, “All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but, it didn’t look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun kinda.”
When his teacher saw the strawberry tart he knew he was in trouble, he recalls, “She was pretty mad… and I think I was in big trouble.”
Josh’s dad received a phone call from the school saying that Josh has been suspended for two days because he took his breakfast pastry and fashioned it into a gun.
Josh’s dad was astounded to learn the school chose such a harsh punishment, even after no one was hurt.
Late Friday afternoon a letter went home with students explaining the incident saying, “A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture.”
But Josh’s dad is not happy saying, “I would almost call it insanity. I mean with all the potential issues that could be dealt with at school, real threats, bullies, whatever the real issue is, it’s a pastry.., Ya know?”
Josh just wishes he could go back to class, but maintains a good sense of humor through the whole debacle saying, “I didn’t get to eat all my breakfast, so, really I am still hungry.”
A California conservative at Fresno State University is suing his school after allegedly being put on disciplinary probation because of his politics.
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The school’s leadership – particularly University President John Welty – is reportedly outspoken in its support for liberal policies like the DREAM Act. The school’s newspaper took things so far last May that they published a poem that begins: “America, the land robbed by the white savage.”
Neil O’Brien is active in student government, and has made no secret about his opposition to the DREAM Act. He decided to ask the professors in the Chicano and Latin American Studies Department – at least one of whom seems to be a faculty advisor for the paper – what they thought of the poem.
When O’Brien approached the professors separately in their offices, the same thing happened in each case: they said they didn’t want to talk with him. Openly recording the encounters on a video camera, O’Brien told them he just wanted to ask questions. They again told him to leave, and closed their doors.
What happened next is what got O’Brien in trouble: The professors called the police. According to police reports, the professors said that O’Brien had been “threatening” and “harassing” them. Police took O’Brien in for questioning, but decided not to file charges after watching video he took of the incident (which O’Brien has posted online here.)
Though the police chose not to pursue the matter, the school seemingly felt that punishment was still warranted.
Fox News continues:
O’Brien’s troubles continued when he was called into the Dean’s office and told he would face a disciplinary hearing in which he would not be allowed to have a lawyer present.
In the disciplinary hearing, O’Brien says he repeatedly asked his questioners to watch the video of the incident – but they refused, even though he brought a DVD with the footage to the hearing.
University Vice President Paul Oliaro ultimately gave O’Brien disciplinary probation for a semester – which forbade him from serving as the president of a student group he formed (a chapter of Young Americans For Liberty) and banned him from going “within 100 feet of the Chicano Latin American studies faculty or staff or their offices or classrooms in which they are teaching.”
“You can see that even though the video completely exonerates me, I still went through all this hell,” he told FoxNews.com.
In O’Brien’s opinion, the only conclusion is that he is being reprimanded for his politics.
“I can’t think of a reason besides that they just don’t like conservatives, and just don’t like to answer questions on anything,” he remarked.
O’Brien’s lawyer, Brian Leighton, added: “What these professors can’t stand is that Neil shows up to all these university meetings… and he says what he thinks.”
School representatives say they cannot provide details on the case, since it has to do with disciplinary action against a student, but insist that personal politics were unrelated to O’Brien’s punishment.
“Fresno State strongly values and supports the First Amendment rights of all students, faculty, staff and administrators. We encourage individuals to exercise their freedom of speech, provided they do so in an appropriate manner,” the school’s spokeswoman Kathleen Rhodes Schock commented.
Though this is related to politics, it should be noted that a quick Google search reveals O’Neil seemingly had a website called “therealpedro.com” about the “lies, crimes, and possible cover-up” of the school’s president Pedro Ramirez, who was found to be an illegal immigrant in late 2010. The website has not been updated since May.
But O’Brien remains firm: “This school is totally Orwellian… I just want to share my opinion when I disagree, and I shouldn’t be treated like a criminal for it.”
Here is O’Brien’s video – the one that school professors called the police on him for saying he was “threatening” and “harassing” them. Skip to about 13 seconds:
darcprynce
Dave C
Gatordoug
