Going too far?

Board faces tough job of school security

Have you noticed how quickly a situation can spiral beyond control these days?

No, we’re not talking about Roseanne Barr, although she’s provided a prime example Tuesday morning. One minute she’s the star of a wildly successful television series reboot. Then, in the time it takes a tweet to make it to the network’s executives, her show is canceled. Hope that smart-aleck (and worse) comment was worth it to her and all the people she let down, from fellow cast members to the behind-thescenes crew.

Another prime example of fast- moving, social media- fueled chaos recently happened right here in Northwest Arkansas, over in the Huntsville School District, where a student got himself expelled from school by posting online a photo of himself wearing a trench coat and holding what some people describe as an assault-style rifle.

To the average adult, the trouble with spreading such a photo becomes clear about a half-second after it’s described. When was the last school shooting involving some unhappy teenager who showed up in a trench coat? Yeah, check your watch, not your calendar.

But to the teen mind, well … even the smartest teenagers manage to do some of the dumbest things.

Maybe we’ve hurt some teenagers’ feelings? So what. A wise, reasoning teenager who is full of common sense can be as elusive as a certain fur-covered, large-footed biped or a swimming creature inhabiting a Scottish body of water.

Here’s what has been reported out of Madison County: A high school junior’s mother filed a lawsuit against the school district in late April. In the lawsuit, Jessica McKinney demands the district overturn her son’s expulsion and the award of punitive damages against the high school principal, accused in the lawsuit of defaming the boy by accusing him of “criminal and terroristic conduct toward a school community.”

It is without question that such an accusation would have an impact on one’s reputation and, certainly, one’s place in the community. Then again, posting a photo like this young man publicized on social media isn’t generally going to get a kid nominated as Youth of the Year, either.

According to the lawsuit, the young man was trying to emulate a 1920s mobster holding a machine gun because he liked the “aesthetic.” But other students chimed in with their own apparent interpretations. “When I drop my pencil, start shooting,” one suggested. Another wrote “school shooter meme.”

The court filing said the young man replaced the photo the next morning with one showing no weapon. He also wrote messages claiming “nothing bad was intended” and that he “wouldn’t throw my future away for something as pointless as a school shooting.”

Other comments appeared an effort to dig himself out of the fairly sizable hole he had dug for himself. By then, however, it was too late. In today’s environment, a student can expect a reaction for just about any social media display of a gun unless there’s camouflage, hunter orange and, in the best of circumstances, a dead 10-point joining him in a pose.

The situation reflects on the tensions that necessarily exist at the juncture of guns — and there are plenty of them in law-abiding Arkansas hands — and schools. Let’s just say these modern times leave little room for benefits of the doubt.

It is hard to blame the Huntsville School Board, which has a responsibility to keep all of its students safe. Imagine what the response would be if the school board waved off the situation as nothing of consequence, then violence broke out at the school.

The case, too, is an interesting look at the question of free speech and how much one can read into a photo. Would the reaction to the young man’s pose be different if the picture showed him with the same gun but wearing camouflage coveralls along with an orange cap and vest? Those photos are taken and posted every fall around Arkansas.

The school district’s attorneys argue the expulsion “was reasonably and rationally related to the school administrators’ vital mission to keep students and teachers safe and to maintain order.”

Naturally, school district officials are pretty mum on student discipline issues.

The judicial system will determine whether anyone was wronged in the midst of this mess. But let’s not pretend the school district can simply shrug off such provocative images when they make the rounds on social media and unnerve fellow students and teachers alike. Was expulsion too much? We would hope the young man’s history would weigh on that determination. His mother, in the lawsuit, claims he’s got good grades and no disciplinary issues.

But who can blame school administrators for doing everything within reason to ensure Huntsville High School doesn’t join the list with names like Sante Fe High School, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Columbine High School?