Jackass Alert

While the kid was probably not very smart for doing that at this point in time, this is ridiculous.

I made a level of Descent based on my high school back then. Can they go revoke my diploma now or something? I blew up MANY evil robot killer things in there.

I was in grade 8 when I made one of my first video game levels, for good old Doom 2. And you know what it was? My school, because it was a building I was familiar with and therefore a good way to build up my skills.

The next level I made was of my house, for the same reasons. Clearly that meant I wanted to kill everyone who lived there too.

Friggin morons

I am now really really tempted to mod Defcon so that the map looks like my school grounds, just for the hell of it.

Back in the day I made a Duke Nukem 3D map of my school, not only was it not frowned upon, they used it on open evening as a kind of weird look around the school kind of thing to get the new kids interested, and they gave me a headmasters commendation for it.

Whoa. As a society we will need to deal with the very tenuous definitions of free speach, and freedom of expression. Since when does playing a game become a threat? Next thing you know they’ll be locking up people for playing Axes and Allies, paintball and laser tag….
It’s amazing that you can buy a high powered fully automatic weapon (which has only one real use) and ‘target shoot’ at human shaped targets but not be considered a threat. A kid playing a virtual game, at home, that he modelled after something he knew is now ‘terroristic’?

At the risk of being flamed for a differring opinion, I understand where the school is comming from. Don’t get me wrong, I used to make levels for DOOM and if I didn’t make my school, I certainly thought it would be cool to do. But after VT, most people (especially school officials) are wandering in vain for an accurate way to predict these sorts of shootings so they can prevent them in their schools. I don’t envy the predicament the school officials are now in. Ban the kid and face the fire. Allow the kid in and if God forbid something happens, face a real fire, not to mention the ensuing deaths. I really think they are just trying to do their best with a lose-lose situation. It’s not like they are throwing him out for playing Half-Life. They are throwing him out for making and playing a mod of the school in Half-Life (I doubt being Asian has anything to do with it). Right on the heels of VT. Though I wouldn’t be concerned about my kid going to school with this kid, some parents might. They are just taking a conservative stance and when it comes to people losing their lives, that may not be such a bad thing. *duck*

I agree with you Marisa. Most likely the kid is innocent, and is just being creative, but in this day and age you have to be so careful because it isn’t uncommon for shootings to happen. Not just with VT but also Columbine, plus 911. Everyone is so afraid to make the wrong choice and then someone has to pay dearly with their life for it.

Now I think it is a bit harsh to not let him graduate, but I think it would have been worse if they ignored it. I think they would have done the same if the kid wasn’t asian. 20 years ago no one worried about stuff like this, but now they have to, and it is a sad an horrible world we are living in. It really sucks that you have to hope your kids are safe when you send them to school now. My oldest starts junior high next year and it worries me. Highschool will be even worse, and not because of the old stuff like cliques and such, but because you have to hope there isn’t some psycho kid there that is going to snap one day.

Are thought police next? Maybe we can find some psychics to let us know when someone is going to commit a crime in the future and arrest those people before hand. Minority Report anyone?

How ’bout we interrogate the school administrators to find out if they have ever thought something bad, or had naughty thoughts about a student and throw them in jail for it.

Who cares about that whole freedom and liberty thing anyway. Sheesh.

There’s a difference between playing Grand Theft Auto and altering a game to reflect the building you go to school in especially after all the school shootings going on lately. Again, I don’t think the kid is a threat, but I wouldn’t want to live with myself if people died because I was wrong about that. I am just saying that there is another side to this debate and as easy as it is to sit back and comment on it when your decisions don’t affect who lives and dies, when you actually have to agonize over these decisions because what you decide has real-world consequences to so many lives, you might find yourself taking a stance you once thought was insane.

Adele, I wish your kids the best of luck in school. Mine’s not old enough yet, but I fear that by the time he is, it will only be worse in schools, not better. Between school shootings and teachers who molest, it’s a frightening world out there.

Matt,
I’m usually on your side, but I have to side with Marisa and Adele here. Before 9-11 it was O.K. to joke with the flight screeners about how you were going to hi-jack the plane. Now it isn’t. Before Columbine you could write lists of kids that you wanted to hurt. Now you can’t. It’s not the thought police here because it was about action, not thought.

Everybody knows here that this kid isn’t a real threat. However, imagine being the school administrator here. Imagine being a parent of a child who goes to the school and talks about little Timmy playing a game where he walks through his school and blows up things. How would you feel as an administrator if the media asked why you didn’t do anything. How would you feel as a parent sending off your child to school knowing the administration didn’t do anything.

Bottom line, it was a dumb idea to play half life in school with a level that looks like the school.

Just throwing a thought out there: since this is a Counter-Strike mod, what if the situation was presented as “student creates simulation of saving his campus from terrorists?” If the mod turned the players into students, that’s one thing (and that would be stupid), but if it’s the standard military versus terrorist groups, I’d say that’s a fairly prevelant theme throughout the media these days anyways.
But then, anyone who has these knee-jerk reactions to violence in video games don’t tend to look too closely at context.

I don’t see this as a punishment as much as a preventative measure. Though you are looking at this from the eyes of the person expelled, I am looking at it from the eyes of the other students, parents and administrators. Just because school shootings are statistically rare doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our best to prevent them from occurring. When you are dealing with the business of uncertainty, you have to make a judgement call. We are talking about the difference between where one kid finishes his education versus the lives of other kids. The judgement was made conservatively. I am not reacting to media coverage, but simply applying Pascal’s Wager here. Though I understand that gives you little comfort, from an unemotional standpoint, it makes sense.

I don’t know enough about the situation to say that it is the decision I would have made, but I will repeat that I don’t envy the decision maker here as I don’t believe that from that point of view things are as black and white as they may appear to someone who doesn’t have to decide.

Most schools now have a “no violence tolerance policy” now. That means that the will take action and expell any threat of violence regardless if it is a though, a note, or an actual act of violence. Too many “blips” as you call them have happened to take any chances.

When you have a child and it comes down to their safety there is not a point where you say, “We hope he was just a creative kid creating a model of his school blowing everyone up.” You do not take chances with your children’s lives.

As for the kid. It sucks. He may have not had any ulterior motive, but parents and the kids that go to these schools are well aware that the schools now abide by this “no tolerance” rule. I am sure when the kid created it he knew that it was something he could very well get into a lot of trouble for if the school found out. Perhaps he just didn’t realize how much or perhaps he didn’t think he would get caught.

As a parent your children are YOUR children are your number one priority. Matt your right. There is no reason to suspect that this kid was a danger, except for the model he created. But because of this model there is no reason to expect he isn’t a danger. ANd no you wouldn’t arrest all the kids in the school because “any one of them might decide to shoot people” because not everyone kid in the school is showing violent tendencies.

This is nothing but sheer hysteria. Whats funny is that all they found in his house was the hammer. I bet if they searched every other house on the street half of them had guns. Best kick their kids out of school too.

Matt,
As for your 3D model arguement, how would you feel if we invaded an Al-Quida camp in Afganistan and found a laptop with LAX modelled in great detail? My guess is you would think it was created to train terrorists to attack strategic points in the airport. It could have been created just because terrorists like to simulate standing in lines at baggage counters.

What I am saying is it’s a fine line to try to determine when these school shootings are going to happen and situations like making a hit list of people you hate, writing violent poetry, threating violence over blogs and creating levels for counter-strike are all things that need to be looked at.

For the VT killings, all we had to suspect was he didn’t like to talk to people and was suicidal at one point. Do I think all wallflowers who are suicidal are murderers? No, but perhaps we should be giving them a closer look.

It’s not as cut and dry as you might think and there was no win win situation for this kid or the administration.

You are right it is a fine line, and it is better not to take chances. Especially when dealing with peoples children. I am sure he was not violent, but like you said it is a very thin line. You don’t have evidence that it wasn’t for a violent reason just as I don’t have evidence that it was, so neither of us can really be sure…

They do have no tolerance rules in school which means that any note found, pictures, drawings, or violent act towards the school or students is punishable with being expelled from school. The kid should have known better! I would rather see the admin be on the side of caution than see them end up being wrong and a bunch of children shot.

Then everyone would be like, “Oh they saw the signs but didn’t take action.”

Like I said I’m not saying he was a threat, most likely he wasn’t, but who can be sure? You can’t say for sure.

And I did read one article that they found other things that they haven’t stated to make them come to the decision.

“For the VT killings, all we had to suspect was he didn’t like to talk to people and was suicidal at one point. Do I think all wallflowers who are suicidal are murderers? No, but perhaps we should be giving them a closer look.”

Yes, we should be giving them a closer look…By not allowing them to buy guns. That’s a sound preventative measure. There’s causality and plenty of evidence to support the argument that suicidal individuals with guns are more dangerous to themselves and others than suicidal individuals without guns.

That has nothing to do with this situation though. There were no guns. There was no strategic student killing trainer. The reason Al-Qaeda might create a 3D model of LAX to train on is that they can’t just walk around LAX on their spare time. This kid goes to the school five days a week for a good 30+ weeks out of the year. You’re not arguing apples to apples.

Adele, it’s unfortunate that as a mother, you have to deal with these fears on a level that those who do not have children might take for granted. But when you let those fears evolve to the point where you disregard common sense to punish and violate the rights of an individual solely to sate your irrational fear, you are committing a gravely unjust act. This student was acting outside of the school environment, with no malice towards any individual in the school and with no effect on the school in any way. It only became an issue when someone with similarly irrational fears chose to make it one.

Following through on your preventative logic will lead to the same fascist activities that are so decried throughout history. Genocide, internment camps, infanticide, these can all be taken as preventative measures that are along the same axis, if the extreme end (and I make the comparison clearly only to shock, the magnitudes are absurdly different), as this shameful incident. The moment we as a society accept taking actions such as these, we begin the slippery slope towards full-blown McCarthyism from which it takes far too much to recover.

The best way to control people is to make them fear. You can just pretend that something could happens and it’s enough, proof or not.

If they fear, you’ll be able to bring down they’re free will and liberty. Fear isn’t logical, fear is an emotion. Drive this emotion and you’ll be able to do whatever you want with anyone, even if it just doesn’t make sense.

Now, who am I to know what’s wrong and what’s right. All I know is I don’t want someone to rule over me without questions ask just because we fear one day something bad could happen. Otherwise, one day, we could really have something to fear and it won’t be the fear of terrorists or the fear of a shooter in a school.

Adele,

If your children have opposable thumbs and your kitchen has knives in a drawer, should your kids be locked away, because they might be dangerous?

“If your children have opposable thumbs and your kitchen has knives in a drawer, should your kids be locked away, because they might be dangerous? ”

Come on now. This kid didn’t get in trouble for living. He got in trouble because he spent the time and the effort into recreating a pre-existing place he routinly visits into a world where he could virtually run around and cause a blood bath in. If I’m not mistaken, the Columbine kids did the same thing.

And another thing, his rights to create a HL2 level don’t matter more then the other students rights to feel safe at their school.

I understand where you are coming from, I installed Doom2 into my school system and so forth. But that was in a time before Columbine. Since then, there have been a number of school shootings prevented by arresting kids who made levels and wrote up threating blogs and so forth. Would you be calling the administrator a jackass if they searched the kids house and found a horde of weapons? So, it’s not the decision that the school made, it was the outcome (only a hammer) that makes it wrong.

If we are going to call someone a Jackass, how about we all agree that the judge who is suing a dry cleaner for 67 million dollars is a jackass.

“I was just reading the Wikipedia article about Columbine. I notice that the two killers used the internet extensively to research improvised explosive devices and such.”

Yes. We should expell any student who uses the internet to extensively research IEDs!!! Am I crazy for having that view?

“Well, Mr newscaster, we knew that Billy spent three hours a day looking up how to blow up a school on the internet, but we didn’t think he actually would do it. I have to end this interview, I’ve got families to notify…”

Come on!

The other funny thing about this is that it’s pretty hard to make an effective, fully-functional, realistic 3D map of somewhere as full of corridors and stairs etc. as a school in only a few weeks, especially when one will have schoolwork, exams, social life, etc. to deal with. So we can pretty safely assume that the kid was working on this before the VT shootings happened. Where does this leave the assumption that he was copycatting the Virginia shooter?

I pretty much agree with everything Doogal said. Kids have access to the internet and kids using that access to find ways to harm people is not the same thing as you are trying to put it.

IF my kids were taking those knives and had a clay model of their school and was stabbing everyone in the model, then yes action and punishment would need to be taken.

You keep bringing up the point that there is no evidence that there was any malice intentions, but then again you have not given any evidence that there wasn’t. A child making a model of that type is questionable. It is against the school policy of “no tolerance” and he broke that rule. I already said I agreed the punishment was a bit extreme. I do however support that the administration did something. Do you have children Matt?

Adele, having children does not improve the quality of your outlook on this situation; quite the opposite, it merely clouds your better judgment due to the emotional power that fear holds. It’s understandable, but ultimately illogical. In respect to personal freedoms, you -must- divorce such emotional responses from the context of your argument, or the content suffers.

As Matt has already pointed out, Doogal’s example ignored the very point that was being made. The context of the Hwang’s mod was no more offensive or dangerous or worrying than any other benign use of 3D modeling technology. There’s nothing that has ever been proven that links this activity to school shootings, so there’s no logic behind the punishment of an individual as a result thereof.

No it doesn’t cloud my judgement. It makes me able to better understand why the administrators had to take action. In this day and age it is no longer OK to make models of that type. Schools aren’t the safe haven that they once were, and because of that reason they created the “no tolerance” rule, which that model does violate, which the punishment is suspension or being expelled from the school.

Adele, unless I’m really missing something here, what you just said is sort of the point of the entire argument. The problem is finding out WHY it is that it’s “no longer OK” to do these things, when there is no substansial evidence to support what is essentially pouncing on assumptions.

People make game mods of places that are familiar to them all the time. And many/most of the games that have the capability to make such mods involve shooting people. Does this mean the proper authorities have to hunt down everyone who’s based a combat-centred game on a real place and lock them up so they don’t enact it? How about arresting everyone who’s ever played GTA? That’s based on real places - the people who play it must want to run around crashing cars and shooting people in NYC!

The arguments for what has happened are, quite honestly, absurd, and nobody posting here defending the decision has so far managed to find a reason for it that had nothing to do with hysteria or simple fear. We’re going round in circles.

When making sweeping decisions that will change the rest of a person’s life, probably for the worst, emotions cannot be allowed to enter into the thought process, or the whole system will go to the dogs.

I typed up another response to this, but it is pretty pointless to keep arguing it. Those of us on here that disagree with you aren’t going to suddenly agree with you, and you aren’t going to agree with us. We pretty much think the other is completely wrong and absurd, so at this point I will just say that we will agree to disagree.

Dident he make this mod at home? In his HOME?

that’s unbelieveble, what a school

There’s so many extra points to make here that it’d take an entire page that’d rival the news article. Suffice it to say, reactions like these are counter-productive. You’re basically singling out this kid, saying WTF? were you thinking you dumb idiot, and practically forcing him into a future mold of disgust and indignation. Likening him to the Virginia Tech shooter is so far off-base it’s silly. The VT student had a history of an aggressive nature towards women he desired, so much so that a teacher felt the need to report him. If this kid had anything of the sort, the news would have latched onto that puppy like a shark on blood and it’d be splashed everywhere. As it is not, we can rightly come to the conclusion that the situation was as cut and dry as was reported.

Ultimately, the responses of “we need to over-react to protect our children” will in the end, lend itself towards creating ever worsening scenarios. You think it’s hard to tell now whether some kid is gonna go nuts? Wait till you start enabling a crack down on simple little comments a kid might make. The ones you need to worry about will clam up even further making it harder to detect their intentions.

What kid hasn’t said something they didn’t mean in the heat of anger? “I want to freaking kill that kid,” after he steals your ball after recess. For those that agree with this students punishment, you’d be throwing the book at some little future Valedictorian that would go on to become a productive member of society.

Fine, investigate the poor kid for making a bad decision. But don’t make it public news and suspend him when you find out there’s no further basis for any accusations and you’re just trying to prove that you’re pro-active in this time of crisis.

It’s been over a moth since the article was originally posted, but I still feel like commenting.
This would had have to have been seven-ish years ago. My middle school had a program where students could play certain sports during lunch, while recruiting other students to act as refferees and scorekeepers (the exact sport changing with the season). I acted as a scorekeeper, keeping track of things that needed to be kept track of on a clipboard with a pencil. One day, one of the players disagreed with my count of his fouls, and decided that violence was the answer. After staying in the nurse’s office for about a half-hour, I was taken to the principal’s office to be informed that I was going to be suspended, and that he was trying to get me expelled, due to the fact that while I was being beat up, the bully had scratched himself. It had been decided that the pencil I possessed should be considered a deadly weapon, and I was a threat to the other students. Because I had a pencil. In a school. A school that required it’s students to have pencils. And someone who was beating me up got scratched.