Shot In The Dark: The Instant Vacation

May 11, 2005

The Instant Vacation

This story makes me wonder - have students cracked the code?

If an elementary school boy wants a day off, he makes a gun shape with his fingers. Bingo - suspension.

If you want serious time off - no problem. Make an anonymous threat:

A series of threats reportedly from students at Clearwater Middle School in Waconia has led the school district to cancel classes at all four of its schools. One of the threats included a list of students' names.

Baview and Southview elementary schools, Clearwater Middle School and Waconia Senior High School will be closed today.

Channel 11 says the entire Waconia school system is shut down.

The threats at Clearwater Middle School began with scribbles in a bathroom that included threats about guns. Two notes that listed students names were later mailed to the school, according to broadcast reports.

The FBI is investigating the threats, which include a hit list with specific names of students, KSTP-TV reported.

Am I the only one who can picture a couple of precocious Waconia ninth-graders chortling away in one of their parents' basements, playing X-box and giggling about the scam they put over on those morons in the school administration? About all the fuss they've caused?

"It's even better than the time we painted genitals on the water tower!"

Posted by Mitch at May 11, 2005 07:29 AM | TrackBack

Comments

I had the same thought, but I'm an old broad, and I;m always suspicious of what kids can get up to. They are smarter than given credit for

Posted by: Silver at May 11, 2005 07:47 AM

Heck, when I was in collage, a small midwestern liberal art collage, we had one year that saw three bomb threats, each on the day of a major science test. I loved how my New York raised semi-hippe video/radio production prof announced the first one to our class at 8 AM. "I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that you will not have the final scheduled for today. The bad news is that there has been a bomb threat and you should leave the building." Long pause as we all barely awake tried to compute this informaion.
"PEOPLE," prof now shouting,"I'm not kidding get the hell out of the building!"
So we trundled out, and many of us went downtown to have breakfast.
By the time the third one came around people just milled around outside the buildings. I always made it a point to get off campus just in case. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Actually I was in more danger a couple of years later when one of my dorm mates proved to be a pyro. Started three fires in the dorm, one caused some real damage, before they caught him.

Posted by: shawn randall at May 11, 2005 08:53 AM

Mitch,

This had been a problem when I was at North Dakota State University. Big test day, bomb threat calls. The College of Engineering adopted a policy, which was read to each class on the first day of a semester: "Any test which must be cancelled will be rescheduled to the earliest possible time; preferably the same day."

It worked. No more bomb threats.

With the advent of caller ID, and the disappearance of pay phones, I've heard that it happens very rarely now. You could email something, but it's hard to hide that IP address attachment....

Posted by: M. G. Stinnett at May 12, 2005 06:13 AM

I went to that school and i was when that happened . to quote what one of my friends said on the news "im scared ,but not really scared".

Posted by: Maxpowuh at June 6, 2006 08:01 PM

I went to that school and i was when that happened . to quote what one of my friends said on the news "im scared ,but not really scared".

Posted by: Maxpowuh at June 6, 2006 08:01 PM

I went to that school and i was when that happened . to quote what one of my friends said on the news "im scared ,but not really scared".

Posted by: Maxpowuh at June 6, 2006 08:01 PM

I went to that school and i was when that happened . to quote what one of my friends said on the news "im scared ,but not really scared".

Posted by: Maxpowuh at June 6, 2006 08:01 PM