Girl Punished Over 'Love' Graffiti

Originally posted by dgtempe

Incredible that this innocent child has to go thru this.

please stop calling this vandall innocent

Ok, maybe she is not innocent, but there are other ways of dealing with this sort of vandelism. The schools in America are getting worse and worse. I have noticed increased violence and vandelism, everyday there seems to be one kid killing another or trying. I would like to know what the heck is going on. Sure, kids do some crazy things but things do seem to be getting out of control lately.

Alright people, if you think this girl is innocent, you need to sip a good cup of reality. In the real world you have to suffer the consequences, no matter how old you are. Why let her get away with it now? She might just go off and vandalize someones personal property if she thinks she can get away with this.

Originally posted by ignorant_ape

Originally posted by dgtempe

Incredible that this innocent child has to go thru this.

please stop calling this vandall innocent

For those of us who were kids once, this child is no VANDAL. Writing something on an already marked place with various messages thru the years is just an invitation for someone else to come and do the SAME. Its KIDS STUFF.

You've heard of kids?

Now, they should paint the damned wall and then warn the kids they will take action if this happens again.
Like maybe calling Homeland Security or something.:bnghd:



[edit on 12-7-2007 by dgtempe]

Originally posted by AryanWatch
This is also gonna have a long term psychological impact on her and she will find it hard to digest that a seemingly harmless act can have the whole world coming down on her so hard.

I hope it has a long term psychological effect.

In life, there are many seemingly harmless acts that can lead to instantaneous death and in some cases, a lingering one.

Case in point:

www.santafenewmexican.com...

[edit on 2007/7/12 by GradyPhilpott]

Originally posted by SynthTokyo
Alright people, if you think this girl is innocent, you need to sip a good cup of reality. In the real world you have to suffer the consequences, no matter how old you are. Why let her get away with it now? She might just go off and vandalize someones personal property if she thinks she can get away with this.

I must be special then. I carved my and my boyfriend's initials in the bathroom of the high school i attended.
By all accounts i should be a criminal now.
.
.
.
.NOT

You should all stop exagerating and pretending to be saints. If you were a kid, you almost assuredly did something like this. Stop the BS.
Who do you think you're kidding?
I'm old enough to know better. I know you've commited crimes LIKE THIS ONE and yet you're presumably free in society and living at least semi-normal lives.

Yes, here she is:




While I think the girl should probably be placed in detention, I think what the school is doing is a bit extreme.

[edit on 12-7-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Now, there's the next Ax Murderess if

i ever saw one.

Thanks for the picture- just a normal kid doing normal things. I too beleive the punishment is way too harsh.

No kidding, everykid does something of this sort. I think everyone is over reacting. She does look like a normal girl to me and or is it the evil vandal?

The law of Crime and Punishment should alsways be kept in mind while handing out this kind of quickfix punishments,specially,if it involves children. Research has proved that the impact of these punishments and detentions on misbehaving/erring children is negligible:

The study found that each group maintained a similar rate of misconduct. This meant the punishment, as prescribed by the teacher, failed to significantly condition the children against acting in such a manner. The authors cite the use of suspensions and detentions alone as ineffectual treatment for punishment. while they often represent a quick fix for teachers by removing disruptive students from the classroom, they alone do not represent a long term solution for the child. The authors also disagree with the expansion of harsh " zero tolerance" discipline policies in schools. Rather than such an approach, they challenge schools to instead employ other proven disciplinary strategies and call for a new mental health approach for impoverished and minority children.

Find the complete article at the link below:

Child Punishment

I hope it has a long term psychological effect.

GP - This is a very sad statement you have made. It really disheartening to see adults like us become so cold and agressive about some kids errors.

In life, there are many seemingly harmless acts that can lead to instantaneous death and in some cases, a lingering one.

Yes,it's possibel.But the point here is - Will the punishment given to this 12 year old be a detterent to other kids? Do you mean to say that by giving her a detention will stop other kids from making mistakes which might kill someone as you say? The incident that you have referred was a huge offence and cannot be compared to this case. The offenders should definately be punished. But in this case the harm/offence is disproportionate to the punishment.

Why let her get away with it now? She might just go off and vandalize someones personal property if she thinks she can get away with this.

ST - This girl has not been proven to be a ' Chronic Offender'. My argument to your point would be - There is no ground for saying that she would go and vandalize other people's property.

AryanWatch

Originally posted by dgtempe
Incredible that this innocent child has to go thru this. What a generation, and obviously some of you are right there behind the NWO mode of thinking.

I completely agree. Talk about overreacting! Ugh.

She should have just had to of cleaned it up w/ a detention or something like that. Kicking her out? she really didnt do anything that bad...

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer
Damaging public property is still vandalism, regardless of intent.

YOUR tax dollars pay for these institutions upkeep. I certainly don't want my money wasted removing some little girl's pipe dreams from the wall.

This is a classic example of the standard, short-sighted "My Tax Dollars" mentality that fails to take reality into consideration.

You can react to the girl's "vandalism" in one of two ways:

Give her a stern reprimand, even notifying her parents, and then spend all of $2 worth of paint thinner and paint to repair the "damage".

-OR-

Send her to an Alternative Education Program (AEP), where the annual ADDITIONAL cost per student is $9,369 per student annually. Four months equivolent being roughly $3,100, again, in ADDITIONAL cost. Add to this the enormous permanent effects of being sent to such schools.

In Texas, it's known as Discipline Alternative-Education Placement," or DAEP. Students sent here are FIVE times more likely to drop out of school, as well as being more likely to end up in Prison (more of your precious tax dollars at work, thank you).

Some schools send as many as 20% of their students to DAEP. That's one in five students. This is not an epidemic lack of discipline, but rather a failure on the part of the schools to deal with trouble in any way other than removing it from the school altogether. Teach a kid to "do time" in "the school for bad kids" only teaches them how to be a worse kid.

Further, the courtrooms are filledwith similar cases, clogging the legal system and, yes, costing yet even more of your precious tax dollars, and gives the kid a criminal record that will follow them for life, preventing them from getting into many colleges and even many jobs, so that they must either turn to a life of crime, or go on the welfare check, which, you might have guessed, uses up more of your precious tax dollars.

$2 and a few minutes worth of corrective effort, versus many thousands of dollars at the least, and possibly millions in the worst-case scenarios.

The sheer enormity of short-sightedness and lack of forethought on your statement astounds me, but the worst part is that such a mindset is so widespread that the problem itself has become an epidemic in the public school system.

:bnghd:

The sheer knee-jerk of your post astounds me. The simple equation has been posted before, this was instated hopefully to act as a DETERRENT. I would reasonably assume that they don't usually catch these kids committing this CRIME - so they want to hit those offenders they do catch with a HARSH penalty.


If you take a moment to THINK and not try to further your agenda, then you -might- realize that were I to commit this CRIME and be caught, not only would I possibly be JAILED, I would also have to PAY restitution for the DAMAGE I had caused. Period. I do NOT see this girl being forced to pay for anything, THAT is the difference. I'd say she got off lucky, whatwith the costs of union labor in schools this turns out to be MUCH MORE THAN TWO DOLLARS IN PAINT.


Post-script; I am rather disheartened by the vitriol contained within a moderators post .

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer
The sheer knee-jerk of your post astounds me.

This is far from a knee-jerk reaction. As both a parent, and a politically active individual, I've given a great deal of research and thought into the problems of the public education system. I may not neccessarily be right, but I can guarentee you that there's a hell of a lot more thought put into it than the off-handed comment of "I don't want my tax dollars wasted on that wall".

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer
this was instated hopefully to act as a DETERRENT. I would reasonably assume that they don't usually catch these kids committing this CRIME - so they want to hit those offenders they do catch with a HARSH penalty.

Had you researched into the topic, rather than assumed, you would find that this is a serious problem with the education system today. In my schooldays, a couple of decades ago, yes, AEP was used sparingly, usually for violent offenders, or as a "scare-the-crap-outta-them" deterrant for non-violent cases.

This is no longer the case. In Texas alone, over 100,000 students are sent to DAEP each year, over 500 of whom are under 6 years old in Pasedena alone!. Over 60% of that 100,000 were for non-violent offenses.

Schools feel like they can merely wash their hands of the necessity to teach any measure of discipline, social correction, or civil behavior, with a "Zero Tolerance" approach to misbehavior, and simply shipping the child off to a correctional facility. In most of these cases, the child is offered no opportunity to defend their actions or to make reparations for it. Instead of teaching the child that this behavior is unacceptable, and making them repair the damage, and understand why what they did was wrong, they are instead banished to a "Special Needs" school where they are treated as criminals.

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer
If you take a moment to THINK and not try to further your agenda

My agenda, good sir, is to Deny Ignorance. Something that is most certainly lacking from an assumption that sentencing a little girl to 4 months of DAEP is somehow even remotely less expensive than making her scrub her magic marker scrawls off the wall and paint over them.

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer
...then you -might- realize that were I to commit this CRIME and be caught, not only would I possibly be JAILED, I would also have to PAY restitution for the DAMAGE I had caused. Period.

In that case, YOU would be an adult, and therefore tried as an adult. It is assumed that past a certain age of accountability, you should know better, and you have the ability to comprehend the repurcussions of your actions.

You would most certainly not go to jail for writing "I love Alex" on a wall with a magic marker, if anything you would pay a couple of hundred dollars in a fine to the city or institution.

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer
I do NOT see this girl being forced to pay for anything, THAT is the difference. I'd say she got off lucky, whatwith the costs of union labor in schools this turns out to be MUCH MORE THAN TWO DOLLARS IN PAINT.

Ah, yes, absolutely. I can see it now. Union labor, contractor grade paint, contractor grade paint thinner, grand total of several thousand dollars. Just where the hell are you going for your odd-jobs? To say nothing of the fact you are entirely missing the point. You don't pay union labor to clean this up, that teaches the child nothing. You make HER clean it up.


You can't seriously make the arguement that $3100 in additional expenses for 4 months of DAEP, plus the 5x additional risk of dropout, the added risk of going to prison, and the additional court costs, are somehow less expensive than making the girl scrub the marker from the wall and repaint with, YES, $2 worth of paint thinner and paint.

I just got through remodelling two rooms of our house. I am painfully aware of the cost of paint, and how much paint it takes to do a job. Even if she had covered the entire wall of a gymnasium, and you used the absolute highest quality Behr paint the expense would come to less than a couple of hundred dollars. For a paltry couple of square feet, you are looking at about $2 worth of paint out of a bucket the school almost certainly had tens of gallons of sitting around in storage, because they have to repaint constantly .

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer
Post-script; I am rather disheartened by the vitriol contained within a moderators post

.

Get used to it when you make such ignorant statements.

Moderators have opinions, and on certain subjects we have VERY STRONG opinions. I have watched the public education system become more and more expensive to the American taxpayer while providing a progressively worse education and simultaneously churning out more criminals, and mentalities like yours being in charge of the school system are exactly the reason for this.

As an expectant father who does not have the luxury of sending his child to private school, it infuriates me how little thought is put into the long-term monetary, psychological, social, and educational consequences of how our public school system deals with its problems. And I most certainly do not apologize for being someone who thinks about these things constantly and looks for solutions outside of the miserable status quo.

(edit add: "...in pasedena alone" and fixed bolding problem)

[edit on 7/13/2007 by thelibra]

Kicked out of school and four months in a disciplinary program. For writing on a wall. Yes, I'd say that was an inappropriate response to the act. She didn't write anything obscene or inciteful (although I guess we'd need to hear from Alex about that), didn't even misspell anything.

Sure, punish the kid, have her parents make restitution. Maybe she should write a report on the evils and costs to society of vandalism. You know, make a learning experience out of it. Isn't that what schools do?

This is a sad thing. I feel for the child and her family (and Alex, for that matter).

This was completely botched.

I think this case was handled inappropriately and the whole issue was overhyped. There is a serious need for all us grown ups to figure out ways to manage the issues with our kids and let them not feel controlled by the state and the law in some way. If proper paren ting is adopted,I don't see any reasons for children getting into disturbing behaviours. As for the case in point, the offence was not an offence at all. I don't see it as vandalism as she had not spoilt some spanky new wall on the wall street.It was just another dirty graffiti filled wall. She should have been told to clean it up.