D R A M A_ Q U E E N

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T A B L E_ T A L K

Those childless people with attitudes: Bite back in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Worse sex can be yours -- tonight!
By Holly Smith
Watching cellulite-laden "real people" on better-sex videos is a sure ticket to getting the erotic heaves
(11/03/98)

Foreign films ... for kids?
By Charles Taylor
Dispelling the notion that they are strange, arty and incomprehensible is the best reason to introduce them to your children
(11/02/98)

Mother rage: Theory and practice
By Anne Lamott
In the miniature war room of their heads, children know exactly where your nuclear button is
(10/29/98)

The mother of all elections
By Lori Leibovich
Can the favorite daughter of the Christian right knock off the feminist senator in tennis shoes?
(10/28/98)

Circumcision in America, Part 2
By Debra S. Ollivier
Despite medical and religious debunking, long-standing cultural biases keep the practice of circumcision alive
(10/27/98)

BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES

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Salon Columnists

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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S A L O N
E M P O R I U M
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Students used to have to commit violence to get kicked out of school. Now they just have to write about it.

SECOND THOUGHTS BY SALLIE TISDALE | I wrote my first short story in Mrs. Hurley's fourth-grade class, when I was 8 years old. I had been reading science fiction for a few years, and my story was a suitably allegorical tale of a young woman bent on collecting bronzed souvenirs of the most important "firsts" in her life. At the end, her minions roll in her newest souvenir -- her first lover.

I was really pleased with this story, especially with the shocker of an ending. I handed it to Mrs. Hurley without a doubt.

My mother taught fifth grade a few doors down the hall, and Maxine Hurley was one of my mother's best friends. They spent that afternoon's recess huddled on the playground, supervising us with one eye each while they mulled over the possibly dire implications of my murderous fantasy. I watched and was gratified to know how exciting my story proved to be. I wasn't punished, though I did spend several afternoons that year and the next doing a battery of entertaining tests with the school counselor.

This memory comes back to me because a 16-year-old boy named James LaVine was expelled from high school in Blaine, Wash., last month because he wrote a poem. The poem was not a class assignment; LaVine has written poetry for several years. The poem in question is called "Last Words." It's written in the first person and is a narrative about killing 28 people and then committing suicide.

I think it's important to note that James LaVine had not been in any particular trouble with the school before, except for a one-day suspension last year for getting in a fight. He's not shown himself to have a particularly short fuse or an urge to solve every problem with force. He doesn't appear to have an inordinate interest in weapons or bombs. He is able to make friends. He has not shown a desire to inflict harm on animals or start fires. He does not, in other words, engage in any of the behaviors commonly associated with impending violence in teenagers. LaVine was expelled solely because his poem described murder.

After LaVine was sent home from school, sheriff's deputies came to his house and read the poem, too. They considered whether he could be committed against his will to a psychiatric ward and subjected to involuntary testing. Since the poem doesn't name the school, the deputies were forced to conclude that he hadn't actually made a threat, and they let him be.

At first, the school district was calling this an "emergency" expulsion, based on the fear of "an immediate and continuing danger." But in the words of a letter sent to the student's parents, the district claimed that LaVine had committed "violations of Blaine High School discipline policy" by showing his teacher a poem that was "of a nature significant enough to be classified as dangerous."

James LaVine was not just suspended for a few days, while everybody put their heads together and thought things through. He was expelled, meaning he could not return to school without district permission or court intervention. He stayed out of school, in fact, nearly all of October, and was allowed to return only after agreeing to go through psychological testing voluntarily -- something his family accepted because the alternative might have meant months of legal wrangling.

I live in the Northwest, not far from Springfield, Ore., where 15-year-old Kip Kinkel made headlines last May when he opened fire on classmates in his school, after killing his parents at home. Here in Kip Kinkel Land, people are a bit sensitive about violent teenage boys. But Kinkel, like the other high school killers we've seen in the news this year, showed a clear pattern of violence over several years. It was in stories he wrote, class reports and conversations; in his hobbies and obsession with weapons and bombs; and in repeated problems with behavior. Kinkel brought a gun to school; his parents had asked for professional help with their son. Authorities in Springfield had every reason to be wary of Kinkel, but they treated him with benign indifference.

James LaVine is guilty of nothing more -- or less -- important than expressing a frightening thought. Blaine High School didn't choose to call his parents or even schedule a conference. They went for the throat, in a socially violent act of rejection and petty-mindedness.

I spoke with James yesterday. He's a bit laconic, rather tired of the whole fuss and clearly glad to be back in school. He's switched English classes, partly to catch up with his work, though being with a teacher other than the one who called out the dogs is probably for the best. I asked him if he liked the poem.

"I'm proud of it," he said. "I'm proud of most of my work. Otherwise, I wouldn't have taken it to school."

Breean Beggs, James LaVine's lawyer, isn't through with the school district. He wants the disciplinary letter expunged from LaVine's record and the school district to apologize.

"They expelled him because they thought he might be depressed and that he fit some profile of school killers -- a profile in their own minds," Beggs told me. "They shifted the burden of proof to him and said, 'You have to prove to us you're not dangerous because you're a creative writer.'"

James wants the letter out, too. "It's really hurting me in my file. Future employers might see that and not hire me. I was planning on going into the Marine Corps. They won't take me with that there."

Gordon Dolman, the school superintendent in Blaine, refused to speak to me. Beggs told me that when he'd mentioned the possibility of a lawsuit, a representative of the district told him to go right ahead. They were far less worried about the damages for violating a student's rights than the damages that might follow a violent episode, a precedent Beggs finds "disturbing."

So should we all. Why would anyone, especially an educator, be surprised to find out that an American high school boy thinks about murder? It's a subject worth many millions of dollars to novelists and screenwriters, and not exactly a new subject for artists. Why, for that matter, would an educator want to smother that boy's expression on something ubiquitous in common discourse? If there had been actual violence at Blaine High School, grievance and trauma counselors would have poured in to help the student body cope -- perhaps by writing poems.

I asked James if he'd been inspired by recent events. He said no and explained in words very like those of other writers.

Teachers always told him, he said, that "you get the most powerful effect with the first person. I just get a feeling and I write, and I don't know what's going to come out until I get to the end of the poem."

James LaVine is back in school now, and perhaps he'll get into the Marine Corps yet. I can just imagine the school district proudly displaying his picture if he succeeds -- weapon at the ready, trained to kill. But the image I keep returning to is that of a cadre of sheriff's deputies standing around analyzing the hidden messages in his poem. It's a curiously pleasing picture. I wonder what they would have thought of Edgar Allen Poe's "Annabel Lee." After all, Poe named names.
SALON | Nov. 5, 1998