Kids are routinely taught that “if you see something, say something”, especially when it comes to a gun in school. But what happens if a student does see something that alarms them but doesn’t say anything at all to a teacher or staff member?
In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a failure to speak up led to a middle schooler being expelled. Now, however, the student and his family are appealing that decision, arguing that the child was afraid to say something because of threats made by the classmate who illegally brought a gun on campus.
The gun was brought to school on February 6th, and according to school officials, the expelled student found out about the gun at breakfast.
The firearm and ammunition made it into the school via the other student’s see-through backpack, authorities said. John Doe insists he only knew about the gun because the boy who brought the firearm showed it to him while the two sat at a cafeteria table that morning.
At first, John Doe thought the gun was fake, according to the appeal. Once John Doe realized the gun was real, the armed student threatened him as well as every other student who saw him with the gun, according to the appeal.
Shortly after 8 a.m., the school’s resource officer learned about the gun and collected the firearm. The boy who brought it was detained in front of John Doe, who then left to go to class. No one was harmed during the incident.
Honestly, it sounds like John Doe is being scapegoated here. How did the school security fail to spot a gun in a see-through backpack? The best opportunity for the SRO to intervene would have been at the door to the middle school, and the Horry County School District needs to explain to parents, students, and staff why their security policies failed to prevent the gun from being brought inside the building.
It also appears that John Doe didn’t have much time or much of an opportunity to inform school officials that his classmate had brought a gun on campus. Breakfast is served at most Horry County Schools starting at 7 a.m., and the first bell at Myrtle Beach Middle School rings at 8:20. The Courier & Post newspaper report doesn’t provide an exact timeline of when the students in question sat down for breakfast, but it certainly sounds like the school resource officer detained the student with the gun while the kids were still in the cafeteria.
So what was John Doe supposed to do? Get up from the table immediately after he’d been threatened by an armed student not to tell anyone about the gun he’d brought to school? Even if I’d had “if you see something, say something” drummed into my head since kindergarten I’m not sure that middle school-me would have reacted any differently than John Doe did. Yes, we want and need students to speak up, but I think it’s completely unreasonable for adults to punish a student for not putting himself at risk.
There’s another oddity involved in the decision to expel young John Doe.
A hearing officer accused John Doe of disturbing schools, a Level III offense in the district’s Student Behavior Code. As punishment, Doe was expelled for the rest of the 2023-24 school year.
Doe’s appeal noted that the act of disturbing schools is not defined in the handbook. The state statute that criminalizes “school disturbances” does not punish failing to act and it only applies to non-students, according to the appeal.
“Even if it did apply to students, the allegations made by the school do not fit the definition of disturbing schools set forth in the statute,” the appeal stated.
Other Level III offenses include gang activity, bomb threats, detonating explosives, arson, bribery, vandalism, possessing stolen property, intimidation, larceny, drug offenses, fraud, gambling, possessing weapons or ammunition and trespassing.
I completely understand the desire of the school district to take a weapon on campus seriously, but John Doe’s punishment simply doesn’t fit his “crime”. If the security team that failed to spot the gun as the student carried in a see-through backpack still have their jobs, I think John Doe should still be able to attend class at Myrtle Beach Middle School. Based on Doe’s account (and yes, we do only have one side of the story to go on) he was more a victim of the armed student than a co-conspirator or accomplice. I don’t know that expelling Doe is going to make other students more likely to report a classmate with a gun in the future either. It may well have the opposite effect; kids playing dumb about what they’ve seen in order to stay out of trouble with school officials.
