More Creeping Public School Fascism

[Eric Cordian]

Here's the latest outrage from our country's government-run schools.  Not
only do school officials presume to stick their noses into what kids do on
their own free time, away from school, but they think they can use lie
detectors to pry into kids' private lives.

Notice the collusion between the pigs and the school administrators.  
Pigs make lists of people, none of whom have been charged with any crime,
and turn them over to school administrators, who have the power to take
action with no requirement of fairness or due process.

Note that nothing can be done about this unless a parent files a
complaint.  Kids don't have any rights in this country, except through
parental proxy, and apparently all the parents in this town have the
school superintendent's balls slapping against their chins.

Schools got away with "Zero Tolerance" using a small number of school
shootings as a pretense.  Now we'll see what they can get away with using
their increased FUD powers under the War on Terrorism(tm).

These administrators need to be gutted and their heads posted in public
view as a warning to others.

-----

DUNLAP, Ill. -- One by one, the subjects were led into a room and hooked
up to a polygraph machine.

The purpose: to determine whether the teen-agers violated Dunlap High
School's code of conduct by attending a party where alcohol was consumed.

Seven of the 10 students who submitted to the lie detector exams -- all of
them football players -- flunked the questioning last month and were
barred from competing in the first round of the state playoffs. Some of
their parents wept when they learned their children had lied to them.

Dunlap High went to extraordinary lengths to get to the bottom of what was
otherwise a routine case of teen-agers getting into trouble. School
Superintendent Bill Collier said it was the right thing to do to sort the
guilty from the innocent: "It may look bad, it may sound bad, but it's the
fairest way."

The investigation began after police broke up a party Oct. 6. Nobody was
arrested, but officers took down the names of everyone present and traced
the registration of all cars parked there. Their list of 15 athletes was
turned over to school officials.

Three students admitted guilt when confronted. But many others claimed
that they had left the party as soon as they realized alcohol was present.
So school officials proposed the polygraphs.

Two students were suspended from the team after refusing to take the test,
and seven more were suspended after flunking. Collier pointed out that
three students were cleared who might otherwise have been punished.

"For these three kids, this worked exactly the way it is supposed to
work," he said.

Dunlap High went on to lose the Oct. 27 playoff game 28-7. Mike Griffith,
a policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States in Denver,
said he has never heard of a school using polygraphs in such a way, and he
called it an extreme measure.

"But in the end," he said, "if the parents don't file a complaint and the
school district is satisfied, it's a done deal."

Matt Jones, an attorney who represented the students who took the
polygraphs and their parents, said a lawsuit is unlikely, but parents may
try to pressure the school board into changing its policy regarding
parties. The students' names were not released by the school or Jones.

Jones said the suspended players -- most of them starters -- had greater
concerns than the outcome of the game. "Part of the disappointment is the
public scrutiny and having their parents disappointed in them," the lawyer
said. "With most of them, it's not about their participation but because
they let down their team."

Some in this central Illinois town of about 1,000 people 12 miles north
Peoria have been openly critical of school officials. "You would think
they have better things to do," said Mark Wade, a 1979 Dunlap High
graduate. Wade said the drinking policy existed when he was in high
school, and athletes and others were sometimes questioned about their
weekend activities. He said students sometimes lied, and their answers
were accepted; nobody gave them a polygraph. "That wouldn't have washed.
The parents wouldn't have stood for it," he said.

Collier and Jones said that before each polygraph session, held at the
school board's offices, the students and their parents were taken aside.
The students were asked to describe their actions that night. Before the
examinations began, the parents were asked to leave to eliminate
distractions.

Afterward, the polygraph examiner went over results with the students and
their parents. Collier described the scene as sad, with some parents
shedding tears as they realized their children had lied to them and the
school.

The superintendent said getting the truth was more important than a
football playoff game.

"I do know kids and adults can't continue to tell lies," he said. "Parents
need to do more communicating with their kids on real-life issues and find
out what they're doing on weekends."

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"