While everyone with a TV camera and a week's worth of 24-hour news cycles to fill was down in Jena last week covering protests and asking Al Sharpton his opinion on things, a tiny hamlet up in New Hampshire was also being plagued by a high school legal scandal of it's own.
It appears that at the end of last semester a group of up to dozens of students conspired to cheat on their finals to ensure good grades, and in the process broke into the school one night to steal the exams. Well, after an investigation the authorities decided to press misdemeanor charges against several students, dubbed "The Notorious Nine", with the threat of having them bumped up to felony charges if the parents insist on taking the case to trial.
Here, as in Jena, no is arguing what happened, the students and parents admit and accept that they unlawfully broke into the school to steal the tests and beat a kid unconscious, respectively, and in both cases, the supporters of the students feel the charges, any charges, are too severe for the offense; outrageous that their children are being treated as though they were criminals for a "schoolyard fight" or pulling a stupid prank. What is it with these so-called "pranks" recently, anyway? Breaking into school? Just a prank. Hanging nooses? What's not funny about that?. Robbing a bank? Haha, it was a joke.
Thankfully, there are people in the town that get why this was serious and inexcusable:
"The parents need to be reasonable," she said. "This is technically a Class B felony offense. How can you reduce that to a violation-level offense - which is for something like spitting on the sidewalk? Although you don't want to hammer them, you want them to know this is serious."
"We have never called the police for a cheating incident. But there is never a time when we would not call the police when someone breaks into our building," said Wayne Gersen, superintendent that oversees Hanover High School.
"They're cheating. They're breaking into the school. They deserve what they got," said Hannah Stone, a freshman.
There is talk that because this city is home to Dartmouth, the students feel added pressure to perform academically that led these students to commit these otherwise inexplicable crimes (one might argue there can't be too much pressure otherwise they'd have been well-prepared to take their tests already instead of cheating). I wonder how many of these parents and pundits pushing this excuse would allow for the same defense for crimes committed by kids from urban areas, that environmental pressures excuse illegal activity.
Is it just men, or does there seem to be a real push toward getting knee-jerk public revenge, a kind of politically correct mob justice, instead of finding the facts and applying the relevant law, even if it doesn't immediately right itself with our internal sense of the due punishment for the offender. Michael Vick got caught in dogfighting (technically, interstate gambling) and the animal rights folks want him locked away forever. Of course, according to typical sentencing, first-time offenders for his offense don't even go to jail, but don't tell that to PETA, they'll call you a soulless dog-hater and flood your e-mail inbox with pictures of mutilated dogs. The law doesn't serve their bloodlust and they clamored loud enough and so now Vick is more than likely going to prison for 12-18 months. Public pressure affecting the justice system in this way goes against the founding principles of our nation, designed to protect the few from the tyranny of the masses. (Not to mention, one might take a gander at the 14th amendment, time permitting)
Moreover, we are told the Jena case is about race relations, but what is anyone doing in Jena to foster the desired racial reconciliation by calling the town a haven for racist behavior? If anything, wouldn't that drive the wedge deeper? In Hanover, NH, is anyone actually working to round out the lives of students so academic pressure doesn't lead to further anti-social behavior? Or will we just point fingers and assign blame on somebody else, anybody else.
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In other news, the First Amendment Center released their annual "State of the First Amendment Survey" results last week -
This year’s survey, being released to mark both annual Constitution Day (Sept. 17) activities and the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, found:
** Just 56% believe that the freedom to worship as one chooses extends to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme — down 16 points from 72% in 2000.
**58% of Americans would prevent protests during a funeral procession, even on public streets and sidewalks; and 74% would prevent public school students from wearing a T-shirt with a slogan that might offend others.
**34% (lowest since the survey first was done in 1997) think the press “has too much freedom,” but 60% of Americans disagree with the statement that the press tries to report the news without bias, and 62% believe the making up of stories is a widespread problem in the news media — down only slightly from 2006.
**25% said “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees,” well below the 49% recorded in the 2002 survey that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, but up from 18% in 2006.
“Americans clearly have mixed views of what First Amendment freedoms are and to whom they should fully apply,” said Gene Policinski, vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center. “To me the results of this year’s survey endorse the idea of more and better education for young people — our nation’s future leaders — about our basic freedoms.”
The right to practice one’s own religion was deemed “essential” or “important” by nearly all Americans (97%); as was the right to “speak freely about whatever you want” (98%) and to “assemble, march, protest or petition the government (94%),” Policinski said. “Still, Americans are hard pressed to name the five freedoms included in the First Amendment,” he said. Speech is the only one named by a majority of respondents (64%), followed by religion (19%), press and assembly (each 16%) and petition (3%).
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