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http://www.news-press.com/news/local...tolerance.html
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Teen expelled for violent stick-figure drawing
By JENNIFER BOOTH REED,
jreed@news-press.com
Published by news-press.com on November 11, 2003
Sixteen-year-old Ryan Richter got kicked out of school Monday morning for a stick-figure drawing that another student thought was a violent threat.
Richter, a LaBelle High School sophomore, sketched a figure shooting another figure. He did the sketch in a recent geometry class and passed it along to a friend and thought nothing else of it.
The classroom doodling, however, got him suspended for a week and as of Monday’s disciplinary hearing, got him kicked out of LaBelle High and recommended for a 45-day stint in Hendry County’s alternative high school.
Richter, his father, Charles Richter, and mother, Michael Ross, say this is a case of a zero-tolerance policy gone awry.
“We were just joking around,” Richter said of himself and the friend who initially saw the drawing.
A student told school authorities that Richter said the dead stick figure was a direct reference to someone and the pony-tailed shooter was a depiction of himself, according to Richter’s account of Monday’s meeting. Richter, who wears his black hair in a pony tail, said the stick-figure shooter wasn’t him and the victim wasn’t anyone at his school.
The school principal referred all calls to Superintendent Thomas Conner. Conner said he can’t comment on the case directly because it’s a confidential student matter. But he did say school officials take threats of violence seriously.
“We have not only a moral but a legislative responsibility to all the students,” Conner said, referring to federal and state laws dealing student violence.
Richter’s artwork does have a violent bent, his parents said. He likes to draw a cartoon character he calls “Little Paranoid Happy Dude,” whose personality can snap from happy-go-lucky to raging mad.
But the elder Richter and Ross don’t think their son has problems. They say he’s a driven young man who wants to be an architect and finish high school early so he can start college.
“His cartoons are his escape from everything,” Ross said. “(School administrators) scanned their little rule book. They didn’t look at the kid behind the rule book.”
The rule books — student codes of conduct — have gotten tough on violence, threats of violence and potential violence ever since the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. State and federal laws support strict discipline for students who break those codes, Conner said.
“I think everybody’s awareness level is a little bit higher, and that’s positive. We look at it from a preventative mode,” Conner said.
He said even before lawmakers passed zero tolerance laws, his district was tough on violence and threats.
Lee County’s zero tolerance rules are similarly strict, according to a review of the district’s student code of conduct. Punishments for fights, threats or weapons violations range from detention to suspension to expulsion, depending on the seriousness of the offense.
Zero tolerance rules have drawn considerable debate in recent years.
Lee County’s Estero High gained national notoriety in 2001 when Principal Fred Bode banned senior Lindsay Brown from graduation because she had a steak knife in her car. School district policies forbid students from having knives on campus.
Conner said he doesn’t think policies have gone too far.
“We certainly have more of a responsibility today for the safety and the security of the students we serve,” Conner said.
If Richter goes to the alternative high school, a group of educators and counselors will evaluate him to see whether he has emotional or other problems. That’s a policy applied to all students sent to the program, Conner said.
Students receive counseling if they need it, he added.
Richter and his parents don’t want him to go to the alternative program because they are afraid the assignment will tarnish his record.
“Granted there are things he’s done wrong here that could be disrupting the class,” Charles Richter said of the in-class doodling.
“But it didn’t warrant expulsion,” Ross added.