We now have two more incidents in school violence where MySapce is concerned.
The first one is about Bluffton High School in Bluffton South Carolina. Samuel David Watts Jr., 17, was arrested for making a threat against a school during an online chat. Then this was brought to light…
While leaving school Friday, several Bluffton High students said teachers found postings relaying threats of school violence on myspace.com, a free Web site where people can post photos, blog or participate in online chat rooms.
Police did not charge Watts in connection with postings on that site, Ferguson said.
One posting by a person with the user name “Trench Coat Mafia” posted a picture of the Newsweek magazine cover following the high school shootings in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999. It marked out the word “Columbine” on the cover’s headline and replaced it with “Bluffton.”
Other pictures posted by “Trench Coat Mafia” referred to Columbine, and one included the phrase, “B-town will suffer my wrath.” Police have not connected the postings to Watts.
Then there’s the case in Colorado Springs, Colorado where three students of Rampart High School created a MySpace account for the sole purpose of harassing another student…
Three high school students accused of leaving nasty messages about two others students on a Web page created off campus have been suspended.
The Rampart High School students were suspended Friday on the grounds that the contents of the Web page, created on Myspace.com, were harassing and threatening, said Nanette Anderson, spokeswoman for Academy School District 20.Four girls, including one who didn’t attend Rampart, created a page with messages bad-mouthing a couple after a falling out. It was titled with a sentence including two students’ names and an obscene epithet asking for them to die.
One student posted a comment that read, “If they can break my best friend’s heart then I can just as easily break their necks.”
Am I blaming MySpace for these incidents? Of course not. That would be ludicrous. Bur I am going to ask the age-old question. Where were these kids’ parents? This should be yet another wake up call for parents to stop being oblivious to their children’s online activities. It’s not that hard really. Even though some people think it is. One of the many banned mutants e-mailed me and was complaining about the e-mail that Gina sent me saying that I’m encouraging people to sacrifice their careers in order to be more watchful of their kids. You don’t have to be a full time stay at home parent to know what your kids are up to. You just have to be a smart one. And unfortunately there’s not too many of these left.
As always it was your pleasure.
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