Colo. High School Suspends Marine Drill Team Member Over Fake Guns
Posted on February 9, 2009
-By Warner Todd Huston
Another Example of How Liberals Destroy This Country
We often call them “our best and brightest.” They are the men and women of our armed forces, all volunteers putting their lives on the line to defend our nation. Some of our most able and trustworthy leaders have come from their ranks. In times of need their sacrifice is cause for us to well with pride and their inevitable loss cause to shed a tear of gratitude. We encourage our young people to consider this life of sacrifice to our country and when at a young age they so choose the life of a soldier, almost without fail we find such young folks to be the cream of our society. Polite. Earnest. Intelligent. Hard working.
So why are the administrators in the Aurora, Colorado public school system harassing and punishing one of those very young people that we should be celebrating? With actions such as this, liberals are not only destroying our schools but also our traditions and our very social fabric.
High school senior Marie Morrow, 17, of Cherokee Trail High School is serving an illicitly sentenced 10-day suspension and her expulsion from school is on the line within the month. Miss Morrow is a team leader of the Young Marines youth leadership group and participates in the group’s drill team.
Miss Morrow has never been in any trouble before and plans on attending the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy after graduation — if the idiots at her high school let her graduate at all, that is. Young Miss Morrow has even received the necessary recommendation from her local congressman as the first requirement to be admitted into the academy.
Morrow’s own mother has told reporters that her daughter’s years of serving her community make her mother a proud parent.
So, what could Miss Morrow have done that is so horrible, so reprehensible, that her entire young life of good deeds is to be wiped away with the wave of the hand by this haughty and unthinking Aurora school superintendent?
It’s all about the cache of evil guns that Miss Morrow had in her car as it sat in the school parking lot, naturally. This young woman has clearly shown herself to be on the verge of becoming a mass murderer, a thug, a regular shoot-em-up cowboy… so say the Cherokee Trail school administrators, apparently. She must be expelled as the most evil of all creatures and an example must be set the administrators of the school have decided. Miss Morrow in now persona non grata to these so-called educators.
Of course, you might at first agree that a 17-year-old should not be carting around a cache of guns to school? And, at some base level, who can disagree with that simple axiom? The problem here is that there wasn’t any such evil cache of guns like the shamelessly ignorant school administrators are claiming.
You see all our Miss Morrow had were some fake guns in her car. Pretty much just toys. It turns out these “guns” were only the practice props that her Marine drill team uses to practice with. They are fake guns made of wood and wrapped in duct tape. They are not real, cannot be mistaken for real and are for the sole purpose of drill team practice.
That’s right. For the crime of having in her car pretend guns that are used for a military drill team’s practice, these brainless dolts in the administration of Cherokee Trail High School are willing to destroy a young girl’s life and reputation.
The school administrators employed a policy that abjures them from having to think even a tiny bit about the situation they face. This is the anti-intellectual foolishness we all know as the “no tolerance policy,” a policy that simply remands punishment while taking away all capacity for the administrators to use their common sense or intelligence — should they have any to lose — in any way whatever. This is the sort of foolish policy that turns a pair of fingernail clippers into a weapon of mass destruction. It is also a way for school administrators to reject responsibility for making decisions. In short, it is an easy way for them to get out of doing their job. We’ve seen it many times.
These administrative automatons refused even to take any testimony from the military on the character of Miss Morrow or to allow the military the chance to explain what the drill props were for.
So, what do we have here? How is this the destruction of America? Let us review what has happened in this case to see where it has all gone wrong. We have the following problems exemplified by the childish over-reaction by the hateful incompetents in this school system:
- The devaluing of the U.S. military
- A punishment applied without a review of she being punished
- A complete refusal of the administration to allow testimony from those that know the girl
- Administrators that eschew taking adult responsibility to review the facts
- A childish treatment of the real issue of violence in schools
- A cheapening of doing the right thing on every single level imaginable
With this horrendous failure by the school administration we are telling good kids that their good works are meaningless. We are telling bad kids that even the military is not to be looked up to, but should be thought of as criminals. We enforce that all guns are inherently evil despite our Constitutional and God-given rights. All of which devalues our traditions of service, our Constitutional rights and societal mores.
Situations such as this teaches our children that adults will not take responsibility to seriously consider a situation before handing down unearned punishments, thereby making authority seem arbitrary and trite. This can do no less than leave kids with no reason at all to trust authority as they grow up. After all, if authority can’t be trusted to act legitimately in administration, why should it be worthy of obedience or even a modicum of respect? The liberal based thinking of our schools is destroying everything we hold dear.
These purported educators are teaching things to our children, all right. Unfortunately they are teaching every wrong lesson that can be imagined here. This is yet more proof that our educational system in this country is broken, perhaps beyond repair.
Miss Morrow should be treated fairly, the actual circumstances of her actions assessed. She did nothing wrong. Not one thing. The thugs in this school system do not deserve the money that pays their salaries, money paid by force of law by the citizens of Colorado. Every member of this school board, this school administration and those in the superintendent’s office should be fired and never allowed to plague our children anywhere again.
» Filed Under Democrats, Education, Guns, News, Political Correctness, Stupidity, liberalism, military
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10 Responses to “Colo. High School Suspends Marine Drill Team Member Over Fake Guns”
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How is this a symptom of liberalism? Zero-tolerance was seriously ramped up during the Bush years. The example of a pair of nail clippers as a weapon was purely a Bush administration conclusion. I wholeheartedly agree that to claim an obvious fake gun is not only real, but also reason to expel a high school student, is a patently absurd idea. I just wonder why this is an example of liberalism gone awry?
Yet, if a school administrator or teacher is accused of something they get their day in court with witnesses, due process, and any mitigating factors taken into account. Even for accusations of sexual misconduct with a student (which should be zero tolerance) the accused gets due process. Zero tolerance is an excuse to not use judgement or take responsibility for decisions.
Rob,
This abomination has it’s roots in the feminist movement, which began in earnest back in the ’70s. Under the guise of women’s rights, the whole notion of common sense was assaulted as evidence of a “male-dominated society.” Perhaps your’re not old enough to remember when we used to have shooting teams in public schools, with real guns. And gun safety instruction.
Liberalism treats the individual as a child, incapable of safe action or rational thought.
Two things that are missing that I haven’t read in any of the news stories but did hear on the radio from people involved – 1) THE CAR WAS NOT PARKED ON SCHOOL PROPERTY!!!! and 2) The people that turned her in did it so that they were not in trouble for smoking at school and the school gave them Chick-Fil-A coupons as a reward.
What happened to common sense? How can she be suspended when the the fake guns were not even on school property. Why were the kids who were smoking not punished as well?
The law that the Cherry Creek School District is using to punish this young lady was passed by a Republican state legislature and signed by a Republican governor.
The extremism of “zero tolerance” has been advocated by many conservatives as well as liberals — trying to blame just liberals for this kind of brainlessness does not help get laws and rules like this changed.
See my left-of-center commentary on this incident at: http://www.davechandler.us/2009/02/in-colorado-school-administration-stupidity-revealed.html
To clarify Marta, the vehicle was on school property. The ones that turned her in were in an area know for the smokers and stoners. Yes, they were rewarded. She has a Durango with windows tinted. I would think they had to really be trying hard to peer in her vehicle.
And thank you Backwardsboy for setting Rob straight. I think in years to come, people will look at Bush in another way.
I don’t quite understand all the outrage on this issue. The reason she is suspended, and will rightfully be expelled is because of a state law which requires her expulsion. As a student, especially one who pays attention, you know you are not supposed to have any weapons or anything that looks like a weapon at school. These rules are put into place to help school security so that kids do not have to worry about whether or not there another kid will have a weapon which could hurt them. What is so wrong about a zero-tolerance policy regarding things that are weapons or fake weapons? Shouldn’t the children of our great country feel completely safe while they are at school, allowing them to pay more attention to their daily lessons instead of worrying about someone shooting up the school? Just because she has no previous record and seems to be an outstanding kid doesnt provide reason to make an exception to the rule. What would you be saying if the administrators had the ability to be forgiving, let her off the hook, and then a week later she comes to school and shoots someone? I know what you and everyone else would be doing; calling for the administrators job.
This situation has nothing to do with the girls achievements; Nothing to do with her future plans. It has everything to do with her dumb choice to bring a fake weapon in her car to school. Shouldn’t we hold everyone in our country to follow the same set of rules, no matter their prior history or future plans? Shouldn’t we be applauding the school district for making students be accountable for their actions? I think the action of the school district so far has been wonderful, and I hope that it continues on the correct path: Expulsion. At the end of the day, we all must be held accountable for our actions.
I propose Otter have his computer taken away from him. After all, if we let him off this time… why, heck, he might just use his computer for kiddie porn. This rule is for everyone’s safety, don’t ya know?
In fact, Otter needs to be put in jail just in case he does something bad.
It’s for the kids, you see?
Otter you are a pathetic piece of garbage who’s opinion should not be allowed to be voiced to even my dog!! These were obviously fake guns stored in her car for drill team training only! Maybe she was to attend training directly after school and she would not have enough time to get back home and retrieve the fake training guns and make it to training on time. Military training tends to frown upon tardiness. How is it that because she is a student she is no longer allowed the right defend her actions and come on she has all the sudden become a possible high school killer I would think not. She is a practicing marine and on the honor roll, come on, look back through the history of all the school shootings we have had. Were any of those kids on the honor roll I THINK NOT!!
The law in this county states (and I’m paraphrasing) that there will be zero tolerance for weapons, loaded or unloaded, or anything that could REASONABLY be mistaken for a real weapon. These “guns” were made out of wood and duct tape. I don’t know about the rest of you (especially Otter), but I consider myself to be a pretty reasonable person. I would in no way think that those were an actual weapon. Basically, now we’re saying you can’t have a long piece of wood on school grounds because someone might mistake it for a gun…..