Is this a tad bit much?

(Serious blog alert, you want the funny, come back tomorrow. But for those that want the answers from yesterday 1-Female, 2- Male, 3-Male, 4-Female, 5-Female, 6-Female, 7-Male)

My school was one of the many schools that dealt with false threats after the Virginia Tech tragedy. You can read about it here.

To sum it all up for you, a student on her facebook page had the following as her facebook status message:

“Alica is… going on a school shooting spree! Watch out kiddies, better hide under that desk, ha, ha, ha,”

Inappropriate? Yup.
In poor taste? Sure.
A bad joke? No doubt.

Someone reported her headline and the University Police Department arrested the girl, she was sent to the Ventura County jail with bail set at $20,000 on charges of making criminal threats, a felony.

After searching her room they didn’t find any weapons, at this point the University and the University Police say that she wasn’t a threat. They did take some of her writing to further investigate but as of now nothing has been reported about it. She has been kicked out of school and has the felony charges pending against her.

When I think about this situation I am really torn…

Half of me… is glad that the University reacted so quickly. What she said was stupid and it was a mistake but nevertheless she should have known better in the current climate. She is an adult and she should think before she types, because you can never be too sure who is going to read something you put out for public consumption. While I believe in free speech there is a limit and a responsibility that comes with it, this just isn’t right, it is akin to shouting “fire” in a movie theater. From the school’s standpoint I get why they would do anything they can to have this squashed, from a liability and a safety standpoint they have to.

The other half… thinks that this is a total overreaction and if she typed it a week before the shooting nothing would have happened to the girl. People have compared this to shouting “fire” in a theater (like uh, I just did), but in reality it was a poorly made joke that wasn’t even made in a threatening manner. If someone jokingly states, “Today went so bad I am going to blow my head off” in a blog should I call a suicide watch for them? Where is the line between common sense and overreaction drawn? If she does get tried on felony charges isn’t that ruining her life for a dumb joke, something that is not as bad as things most teenagers actually do?

I guess I figured I would throw this up and see if anyone wanted to discuss this a little.

Is this even a free speech issue? Is this an overreaction? Are we hypersensitive or not sensitive enough? There are so many ways to look at it, I figured it would be something different to talk about.