The Massive Over-reaction of the Highly Paranoid

It is not often that I comment on what would appear to be relatively minor incidents in foreign countries, but here's a little tale illustrating the terrible paranoia that can follow disasters, and must be guarded against. It is, of course, from America:

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, a boy was expelled from Clements High School in Texas. You may well ask what the reason was. Was he found carrying a firearm onto school premises? Was he taking or dealing drugs on school grounds? Was he victimising other students? No. His crime was to create, many years ago, a map for the internet game Counter-Strike based on his school.

The truth is I don't really know what I can say about this bizarre state of affairs. It should be immediately obvious to anyone thinking about the above paragraph for a minute to realise the utter stupidity of the school's decision.

Or so any right-thinking, sensible individual would believe. Unfortunately, it would appear that the school board directly responsible for Clements is not populated by right-thinking, sensible individuals. It would appear that it is, instead, populated by paranoid morons who cannot see the fact that making a map for a video game does not qualify as behaviour signalling psychotic predisposition. Now, I understand that after a tragedy involving a boy of a psychotic disposition (although this was not helped by his situation, as reported in the previous article) shooting many of his fellow students, schools are liable to be a little edgy, and I could understand if the boy had brought weaponry into school, or said that he'd planned to kill some people. But the fact is he didn't, he made a map for a video game. That's the security risk here. Apparently.

Now, to the school board's credit, they did organise a meeting to discuss the reinstatement of this unfortunate. Unfortunately, a quorum was not present as many of the board's members stayed away (for what reason I cannot be sure) including, and here's the surprise, the Board's President Steve Smelley, the man who called the meeting. Now, not attending a meeting that you've called is a pretty clear indication that you don't want that meeting in the first place, although again, I cannot fathom why.

Time was when you'd make a mistake, admit it and resign immediately.