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.

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.

So, a total lack of evidence becomes a reason to punish people in your eyes. That’s just incredible to me. Not to sound overly dramatic but do you realize where that kind of logic leads?

“Best expel all children who express any sort of resistance to blind obedience. After all, there’s no evidence that this isn’t an expression of a desire to shoot authority figures. Safer to just expel them.”

“Best black-list anyone in a union. They might be Communists and Communists might be dangerous.”

“Best arrest all the Muslims. There’s no evidence they don’t have malicious intentions. After all, the guys that blew up the twin towers also were Muslim.”

Those use exactly the same logic. There’s no evidence that any particular individual who falls in those groups (a rebellious child, a union member,a muslim) is a threat but under your reasoning we should be able to punish them anyway based on….nothing but utterly unfounded paranoia.

A child making a model of that type is questionable.’

Why? You keep saying that, along with a couple others, but you’ve yet to provide any reason to believe it’s questionable. Can you demonstrate some sort of historical link between being a 3d modeler and hurting people? Can demonstrate -any- link at all? I’m quite sure you cannot because no such link exists.

Do you have children Matt?

Nope, but my girlfriend and family are all more likely to be killed walking down the street than your kid is at school, and you don’t see me freaking out and calling for punishing random people on the street just because there’s no evidence that the workman carrying a screwdriver DOESN’T intend to use it for violent reasons, or for anyone who drinks alcohol and has a driver’s license to be put away since there’s no evidence the person doesn’t intend to get behind a four-wheeled murder machine while drunk.

In free societies, evidence must precede punishment. Otherwise justice just went goodbye.

–matt

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.

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.