thongs, get you kicked out of school Options

[Divergent Realit...]

blap

CHESTERTON -- Spence Stockwell waited until halftime to perform his stunt, after the players had left the field and before the band marched, Melynda Tipton, Stockwell's mother, said.

"I thought it was funny, and so did a lot of other people," Stockwell said. "I wasn't trying to hurt anybody."

School administrators, however, were not amused.

The following week Stockwell was called into the principal's office and was told he'd be expelled until the end of the 2007-08 school year.

"They said he'd be expelled whether he admitted doing it or not," Tipton said.

Stockwell said he was surprised at his punishment.

"I thought I'd get a couple days out of school," he said. "You get three days out for fighting and that's worse than what I did. I thought it was pretty unfair. I thought I'd get maybe three days and community service."

Tipton said he and his friends had talked about the plan for a long time, but that she told him she disapproved.

"I told him, 'When they take you to juvie, call your friends' parents because we're not bailing you out,' " Tipton said.

Stockwell wasn't arrested, but the school notified the teen that he was suspended for 10 days and that he would have to undergo an expulsion hearing on the grounds that his streaking, in front of 3,500 people, "constitutes an interference with school purposes or an educational function," according to Indiana law.

Chesterton High School administrators declined comment Thursday.

Duneland School Corp. expulsion examiner Mark McKibben said he does not directly address expulsion issues, but directs the student expulsion hearings.

Tipton has already begun her son's community service punishment, which includes, among other things, doing landscaping work for the elderly and volunteering at a local charity.

"I told him he'd have to pay the consequences, and he is," she said. "He's not eating or sleeping." But Tipton also said expulsion is too severe.

"This is ludicrous," she said. "He didn't disrupt the football game."

Tipton pointed to a choir hazing incident as an example of the inequity of punishment handed out at the school.

In February, several show choir members hazed another choir member with bodily fluids while on a choir trip, receiving suspensions.

Porter County Sheriff's Department Public Information Officer Lt. Chris Eckert said the streaking incident "could be considered disruptive and go against school rules, but it's not a criminal act."

Additionally, the fact that Stockwell wore a thong would preclude it being considered indecent exposure, Eckert said.

The hazing by body fluids, however, would be considered a crime of battery by bodily fluids, Eckert said.

"There's no question it's much more serious," he said.

Tipton said she plans to take her argument before the expulsion board.

"I think they've gone a little bit overboard here," she said. "I just want my kid to graduate."

so running in a thong will get you kicked out of school.

way to go.

[Black Bear]

"battery by bodily fluids"
never heard that one, but it brings up a few funny pictures in my mind

I'm pretty sure you are guilty of this one.