For want of a gun, a bag was lost

[captainsblog]

Over the weekend, we got more than our share of alerts from the Robocall and Email Division of Emily's high school: on Friday, a student there, being disciplined in the assistant principal's office, was found with a gun in his backpack. They didn't name him, but the paper did the next day, revealing him to be (a) a him, (b) a 16-year-old, and (c) nobody Emily knew.

When Em got home last night, she reported that the biggest buzz among the students wasn't Who he was, or What was he thinking, but "Why no bag checks?"  School officials had reacted this way in the past following some much lower-scale tussling among students, and it seemed a wise precaution, especially with a 9/11 of bad memories and a 9/12 of wacked-out protesters still firmly in the rear-view mirror.

Yet, sadly, there's a mentality among many educators that prevents such preventive measures, because it "sends the wrong message."

So the proposed solution for making their school safer, at least according to early reports? Banning backpacks.

Imagine what fun this will be for a senior, who's not only taking calculus and physics and every other heavy-booked required course in the catalog, PLUS taking art coursework and having to shlep a portfolio all over a three-story school building. A school building which, by the way, is still under construction with cinder blocks all over the hallways.

However, in a concession to the needs of the fairer sex, girls will still be allowed to carry purses. Good thing girls don't carry guns, huh.