Eagle Scout Suspended For Keeping 2-Inch Knife In Car

[pokerfan]

Rules are rules I guess... No comment about the tire iron in his car. Why do we allow students to bring a freaking tire iron onto a school campus? That's more of a weapon than a small knife.

TROY, N.Y. — An Eagle Scout who kept a 2-inch pocketknife in his car has been suspended from his upstate New York high school for bringing the weapon onto school grounds. Now he is concerned about his chances of getting accepted to West Point.

Matthew Whalen was suspended for 20 days for violating the Lansingburgh Central School District's zero-tolerance policy. The 17-year-old senior says he gave the knife to an administrator last month after another student told officials about it.

Whalen says the knife was a gift from his grandfather, the police chief in a nearby village. He says he kept survival items in his car in case of an emergency.

Whalen says he's been wanting to go to West Point for years but now worries about his chances.

District officials say they don't comment on student disciplinary matters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/16/matthew-whalen-eagle-scou_n_321220.html

I remember a buddy of mine pulling a knife on me in school (~1975). He was just joking around and being a dick in general. I'm not a 'tough guy' but Jujutsu has always fascinated me. I acted reflexively and seized the hand with knife, stepped between him and the knife, twisting his arm behind his back and forced him to drop the knife. I then took the knife and stuck it into a locker, snapped off the blade and handed the remains back to him. He never did that again. What was he going to do, cry to the principal? Even in 1975 you weren't allowed to threaten another student with a knife.

But this kid in NY got a month's suspension for having a knife in his car! Hell, I have several knives in my car, along with a sleeping bag and other 'survival' items like a camp stove and a tent. I'm not a 'survivalist' nut but I like being prepared for emergencies: You break down with me and I'm going to having you in a sleeping bag, in a tent, while I'm cooking dinner.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Hopefully West Point will look over his application and school records and

ask questions rather than summarily dismissing his possible acceptance to the school.

[TheMadMonk]

39. Why would they? Competition for entry is so heavy (I would presume)...

... that, absent "connections" of some sort, they will simply downcheck him and move straight onto the next applicant.

[atreides1]

2. The results of Broad Brush mentality.

[Ilsa]

4. And people drawing a paycheck for not using their brains and judgment. nt

[pokerfan]

8. My sister is a an educator

and we had this discussion a few years back. She was defending the administration policy of zero tolerance, saying that it's equitable and wanted to know what I would replace it with. My response was that educators should assume responsibility to assert discretion and that they hide behind 'zero tolerance' to avoid making tough decisions.

Yes, evoking discretion isn't always going to equitable or fair but neither is zero tolerance. If you want to enforce zero tolerance than you need ban pencils because those are potential weapons in exactly the same way that a folding knife in someone's pocket is a potential weapon.

I have no problem with banning small knives in the classroom. Well actually I have a small problem because I always have a knife of some sort with me at all times because they're useful. But if that's the rule I can abide. But getting busted for having a 'weapon' in the car? Hell, the car itself is a weapon.

[peace13]

12. Coming to a school near you...Kids not allowed to have gasoline in their cars while on campus!

Car keys deemed dangerous in schools. Belts no longer allowed to be worn at school. Plastic cutlery no longer available in the commissary. Book binders with metal rings no longer safe at school.

[prole_for_peace]

19. Hey those binder are dangerous...

I caught a few fingers in those rings OUCH

[MidwestRick]

41. Not to mention

the cuts the paper inside them can give.

[csziggy]

47. You forgot about shoelaces - they could become a garrotte!

Books also make good weapons and pencils can be lethal.

[dhpgetsit]

13. I can remember kids playing "stretch" with knives in the playground.

I imagine if a teacher had seen it the kids would have been ordered to save it for after school. But nobody would have been suspended for carrying a pocket knife.

[RaleighNCDUer]

28. With the ban on knives for the past 20+ years, I wonder if kids today

even know what 'stretch' was.

Or 'mumble-t-peg' (or however that is spelled - that was my Dad's game).

[conscious evolution]

43. We called it suicide for some reason

Might have had something to do with the fact that we used an army bayonet.
Growing up a friend that had the body of an old Ma Duece (M-2 50 caliber air cooled machine gun) that we used playing 'army'.No one batted an eye.I imagine if todays kids were to run around with one they would mobilize the National Guard.

[Yupster]

29. When I was very young

I don't remember how old, maybe 4th -5th grade?

Anyway, I was in Cyub Scouts and I had just earned my tote badge and I was in the back of my class sharpening my pencil with my pocketknife and the teacher walked by and the way I remember it she screamed and hit the ceiling. Next I remember I was in the principal's office.

He was a fat Italian guy (this was NYC) and once we were in his office he reacted just right to a crying little boy. He had a big smile, asked to see my tote badge, and told me I shouldn't take the knife out in her class since she doesn't like it.

Today I would have been suspended -- heck I may have been arrested.

I'm reminded of a Shel Silverstein poem which I'm sure I don't remember exactly, but it was something like this.

The saddest thing I ever did see
Was a woodpecker pecking at a plastic tree
He turned around and said to me
Friend - things aren't as good as they used to be

[Orrex]

3. You're overlooking the power of the tire iron lobby

[opihimoimoi]

5. he don noes it but this prolly increases his odds for acceptence into WP

[Obamanaut]

6. This is an example of "zero tolerance" gone wild. Nothing is tolerated.

Kids cannot play dodge-ball because someone might actually be hit with the ball. Red pens can't be used in some schools for grading papers because red is too harsh and might damage little psyches. Girls can't wear tuxedos for senior pictures because it is not traditional.

We are screwn, and we did it to ourselves under the cloak of political correctness.

[pokerfan]

16. My biggest wake-up call was a giant F

on a math test of all things. It was integral calculus. Math has always been easy for me and when faced with a difficult problem I could always somehow, someway figure my way out. I had other classes to worry about at the time: Physics 201, EE 202, etc. Math was always a given. But that F with an exclamation point, mind you, shook me to my core.

I'm not going to rage against political correctness in general but we are 21st century Homo sapiens and you're going the begrudge me a simple knife, in the car?

[Obamanaut]

25. My giant F was in 11th grade English. For the junior theme paper

my subject was going to be on weightlifting, something I was interested in even back then (graduated HS 1960.) The teacher said I could do better than that. I responded with words to the effect that it was that or no paper. No paper results in F for the grading period.

He didn't approve the subject, I didn't write a paper, got my F, and got kicked out of the National Honor Society. It was my first real lesson in actions have consequences. And he was the best teacher I ever had.

When he died a couple of years ago, hundreds of former students attended the services.

[Ian David]

7. Hasn't the school administration ever watched Red Dawn?

[peace13]

9. I guess if you get trapped in the car and your seat belt won't release...

you have to burn it off with the cigarette lighter. On second thought, have cigarette lighters been banned from cars now, I don't recall. What a crazy world we live in.

[slackmaster]

10. Camp stove + water bottle + bandana + matches = potential Molotov cocktail

The kid should be sent to the nearest Supermax prison for the safety of our children.

[negativenihil]

11. As a scout...

I can say with certainty i trust another scout with a knife far more than your average joe.

Scouts are required to learn proper use and pass a test before they are granted the pocket knife card. In this case, i side with the scout. Knives are tools, and i am confident this fellow scout did not intend for the knife to be seen or used as a weapon.

[conscious evolution]

20. Pocket knife card?WTF!!

They did not have that when I was a scout.

[Yupster]

31. We called it the tote badge

I wrote about mine above in the thread.

[GreenPartyVoter]

40. Our troop calls it their "whittling chip." There may be more to it than that but that's what mine

got when they were Bears.

[negativenihil]

33. Yup!

I was issued a card to keep in my wallet and on my person that stated i had passed the scout's knife test and was allowed (as far as the scouts were concerned) to carry a knife.

Just to give you an idea of when i was in scouting, i joined as one of the first groups of Tiger Cubs (it was a trial or pilot program, it started in the mid to late 80s iirc). From there i went into cub scouts and then alter into boy scouts.

i left scouts when i was 17 - juggling a job and school AND scouts was hurting my grades so i opted to focus more on school work.

[negativenihil]

36. ah ha!

Here's a web page with a picture of the card - all the way at the bottom:

http://cubmaster.org/advance/cubscout/whittlingchip.asp

[seemunkee]

45. Tote'N Chip

Not sure when you were a scout but we had them in the 60s.
If someone saw you doing something wrong with a knife, ax or saw they cut a corner off. All 4 corners gone and you had to retake the class and get certified again.

[pokerfan]

35. When I was a scout

we had to qualify for basic marksmanship at the nearby college shooting range. It was only .22 long rifle but nevertheless college shooting range are three words that no longer go together.

I have a fondness for Jiu-Jitsu because while I'm a large guy, I'm not a stereotypical tough guy. Fuck with me and I will have you in an arm bar before you can say wft.

But yeah, knives are simple tools. Any student using one inappropriately, suspend his ass. But preemptively banning potential weapons, no.

[negativenihil]

37. Wow!

My troop and pack never did marksmanship, i would have enjoyed that (My father and i would shoot targets with my trusty single shot, bolt action .22 winchester long rifle which was willed to me by my grandfather on my mom's side - so yeah i really enjoyed target practice and would have loved a chance to merge that with scouting)

[RaleighNCDUer]

46. When I was a cub scout Webelo I got my knife by buying it at the PX.

Along with my canteen and my flashlight.

I learned the proper use of it by misusing it, cutting my self while whittling, twice in ten minutes. (Cut AWAY from your hand, not toward it.)

Of course, that was before grown ups had to run everything. If you wanted to play baseball you found a dozen or so kids who had bats, balls and gloves, and you played baseball. No uniforms, no adults, no teams and playoffs, no trophies, and arguments about a play were decided by fistfights, not refs.

Somehow, we all survived.

[BuyingThyme]

14. This is fucking crazy.

I would have been suspended for my entire childhood.

What's the policy on butter knives?

[BuyingThyme]

15. And where's the NRA when you finally find a reason for them to make a false

Second Amendment argument.

[The_Casual_Observer]

17. Pocket knife is a tool in the hands of a Scout, not a weapon. Case closed. Suspend the

idiotic shit-the-pants administration of that school instead.

[slackmaster]

23. California knife laws are much better than those of most states

Anything with a blade under 2 inches is exempt from pretty much everything including the ban on carrying a concealed switchblade.

Also, in the few municipalities (e.g. Los Angeles and Berkeley) that have restrictions on blade length for concealed folding knives, the law has exceptions for people who are carrying them as tools. So unless you are a young unemployed black or Hispanic male, you can claim that you need it for your job. (If you are a young unemployed black or Hispanic male you are obviously a criminal and need to be arrested anyway.)

[Buzz Clik]

18. I understand he also was storing a highly flammable and potentially explosive liquid in his car.

Gasoline can be deadly.

Lock him up and throw away the key.

[MindPilot]

21. Jeeeze, they are overlooking the obvious: the car is the REAL weapon.

It's like that old joke about the guy who rides a bike across the border every day with a backpack full of sand.

Every day the border guard looks through the backpack and finds only sand.

Finally after a couple of years the, guard and the bike rider have become friends and the guard says, "every day for years you cross the border on your bike, carrying only sand. I know you are smuggling something; what is it?"

The man replies, "bicycles."

[nebenaube]

22. Every goat-roper I went to HS with

had a twelve gauge and a 30-30 on the gun-rack in their trucks; parked in the High School parking lot.

[MindPilot]

26. Yup

Man I hated them.

[slackmaster]

24. I carried a folding Buck knife with a 4.75" blade openly on my belt every day in high school

How far some people have strayed from common sense.

Even in 1975 you weren't allowed to threaten another student with a knife.

That's right, and 1975 happens to be the year I graduated from high school. The rules (and state law) addressed behavior, not objects, which is how it should be. A pocket knife is a perfectly reasonable thing for anyone to carry just about anywhere.

[MindPilot]

27. Hence the nomenclature, "POCKET knife" eom

[FourScore]

30. this is bullshit.

You can't ruin a kids life over something like this.

[Orsino]

32. Zero tolerance is an excuse not to think.

It's very popular with school boards and administrators, but eventually it runs smack into reality, and its stupidity is apparent.

[MajorChode]

44. I can understand why they do it

Locally a little girl got suspended from primary school because her mother packed a steak knife in her lunch. Is that stupid? You bet, but the alternative is even stupider when it comes to trying to defend against all the frivolous bullshit that school districts are faced with and tax dollars are spent to defend instead of educating children. Non subjective policies stop lawsuits dead in their tracks. I wish they didn't have no brain required policies, but I also wish that parents who bring frivolous lawsuits against school districts could be thrown from a helicopter screaming. I doubt either wish will come true.

[Moondog]

34. And educators wonder

why large numbers of the rest of the population believe them to be spineless idiots.

[pokerfan]

48. God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

Mark Twain

[Swamp Rat]

38. I carry one on me 24/7 and have dozens in my house and car.

My Gerbers and Leathermans go with me everywhere too. When I was a child, we carried buck knifes (to whittle sticks) and much bigger multitool knives (to use during school lunch/art class, etc.) to school, but no one ever got stabbed... except with a pencil.

:dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce: :dunce:

[vadawg]

49. hell i carry two gerbers on my person at all times, also my glock

in my truck i have a carbine, a 12 gauge, an entrenching shovel and a couple of machetes as well, and know one has been injured yet....

[Swamp Rat]

50. I would have brought a U.S. Army tank to show-and-tell

but I was too young to drive at the time - couldn't reach the foot pedals. :D

[vadawg]

51. lol yup i get what you mean, ive always been around weapons, whether that was an old bolt action

or a sawn off 12 gauge or an old pistol, so i guess i dont think anything of it anymore, but i hate to think of the crap my kids will have to put up with, not being able to carry a pocket knife.

[fascisthunter]

42. that's a bit ridiculous