Posted on 10/09/2009 7:48:04 AM PDT by ReagansRaiders
Soldier suspended from school Posted: Oct 8, 2009 05:26 PM
A NEWS10 EXCLUSIVE By MARK O'BRIEN
LANSINGBURGH -- High school senior Matthew Whalen is the kind of student any parent would want.
He's an Eagle Scout, on the honor roll, taking Advanced Placement classes, and never been in trouble with the law. He's received commendations from the City of Troy and the Boy Scouts of America for saving a woman's life, and this past summer, he completed Army basic training. All of it was accomplished before the age of 17.
"I'm just trying to do what I can while I can," Matthew says.
His goal is to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a dream since he was in grade school.
"I have a first-grade yearbook that says I want to be driving tanks in the Army," Matthew says. "I mean, this is something that I know I've always wanted to do."
But the dream could be in jeopardy, thanks to a two-inch pocket knife that officials at Lansingburgh Senior High School found in Matthew's locked car last month. The pocket knife was a gift from his grandfather, Robert Whalen, who's the Hoosick Falls Police Chief. Matthew says he kept the knife in a side compartment and never tried showing it off or threatening anyone with it. Instead it was a part of the survival kit that was his car.
"My car is designed in a way that if I ever broke down, I'd be OK," Whalen explains. "I have a sleeping bag. I have bottled water. I have an MRE. I believe it's better to be prepared and not need it than need it and not have it."
Matthew says school officials approached him on Sept. 21, asking if he had a weapon on him. When Matthew answered he did not, he says the officials asked if he had a knife in his car. Matthew said it was a pocket knife, and took officials to his car when asked. He also turned over the pocket knife when asked.
The Lansingburgh Central School District has a zero-tolerance policy on weapons. According to the district's Codes of Conduct, students are not allowed to have "a weapon of any kind" on school grounds. Even though a pocket knife is not considered a weapon under New York State penal code, the district also prohibits students from possessing anything "that reasonably can be considered a weapon."
According to Matthew, the school suspended him for five days, during which time a Superintendent's hearing was held to determine the extent of his punishment. Matthew's family contends only the high school's principal and athletic director were present, not the Superintendent or the assistant principal who initially suspended Matthew. And despite a letter from Matthew's Scout Master explaining how a pocket knife is a common tool for scouts to have, the district suspended Matthew for another 15 days. The Whalens say they received no explanation as to why, and they claim there was no opportunity to ask.
"I want him to have fair treatment based on his character," says Matthew's father, Bryan Whalen. "It just totally baffles me that they would go after this when they have much bigger fish to fry."
The Whalens say during the Superintendent's hearing, officials admitted that Matthew cooperated fully, didn't have the pocket knife on him, had no intention of using it, and never threatened anyone with it. "They'd already made their decision," Whalen's father says.
In a statement to NEWS10, Superintendent George J. Goodwin says, "We do not comment on discipline related to an individual student. Our policies are clear that weapons are not permitted on school premises and subject to disciplinary consequences."
Legal expert Thomas Carr, of Tully Rinckey PLLC, says school districts are within their rights to impose and enforce safety policies, even if a pocket knife is not considered a weapon under New York State penal law. But he also says such school rules can quickly become so-called "gray areas" that leave the meaning of what's considered a weapon open ended.
"If this 17-year-old is driving his car to school," Carr says, "let's face it, the tire iron in the trunk to change the wheel is much more of a deadly weapon than a one-and-a-half inch blade knife."
Carr also says the Whalens might have grounds to pursue legal action against the district if Matthew felt he had no choice but to allow school officials to search his car.
At this point, the Whalens are not sure when or if they will sue the district. Instead, they want the district to reinstate Matthew immediately and remove this from his official student record.
"He needs to be doing the application for his admission to West Point right now," Bryan Whalen says. "They're delaying that, and that could be very costly for him."
Matthew says he wants to follow in the military footsteps of his father and grandfather. His grandfather, Robert Whalen, received two Purple Hearts for his service in the Vietnam War. Bryan Whalen served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and at Ground Zero, as his unit was on the scene by the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. He's also received the Soldier's Medal from the U.S. Army, and he pulled survivors from a burning helicopter that had crashed at the Stratton Air National Guard Base during an air show crash in 1991.
Matthew guesses a student must have told school officials, but he doesn't know who did it or why. His father thinks it might have been a prank to see Matthew get a little heat from administrators and that the intent was for it to never get this far.
"It's just plain wrong of what they've done," he says. "It isn't a weapon!"
But the family feels the district overreacted, if not for suspending Matthew in the first place, then for adding an additional 15 days to the original suspension.
"If they had told me, 'Take this out of your car,' I would have said alright, and it never would have been an issue," Matthew says. "I was upset with it, but I can understand that. They have the zero-tolerance rule."
The district provides a tutor for Matthew for 90 minutes every day; he's banned from stepping on school grounds for any reason whatsoever, including assignments and sporting events. Matthew says it's hard to cram more than six hours of work into his tutor time, and he says his work is not being graded until he returns to school. All he wants is to return to class.
"The rest of my life could be affected by this," he says.
Where’ve I been? Well, when not taking my daughter to piano class today, I’ve been emailing this story across God’s Green Earth to every show on FOX News as well as every nationally syndicated conservative columnist and radio host there is. Plus to really stick a fork in these weenies, I’ve also contacted John Stossel.
Good job and thanks for doing this. Let me know if I can help out.
Freepmail me....
Thanks. Just sent off my email...
And in court, the family won that one. While they were there, it seems like they went ahead and made the school district pay to hire a nurse to be on site.
Darn shame about that cause I believe nurses are well-paid.
So please keep us all informed and particularly if a legal fund is established.
Ping me for any outcomes you are able to post here.
I’ve carried the same pocket knife every day since I was 11 years old. That’s 46 years.
You are a rock star.
I believe appointment to U.S. military academies require the congressman’s recommendation. My suggestion would be to ask the congressional office to study the situation and determine that it will not hinder his congressman’s recommendation. It might be that if the Congressman’s office called the school or district and stated that they don’t want this to hindr Matthew’s appointment to West Point, it might be sufficient pressure to get this thrown out.
Obviously, the commandant of West Point would most likely laugh himself to tears over this, and all other things being in order, would welcome this young man.
But something has got to be done about this mind set that destroys good people while leaving the crud and waste of society virtually untouched.
Mark wasn’t thrown out that I knew of, I heard he finished his term!
(That was easy to figure out once yo mentioned he left school early, he was 19 and a senior in high school, shaved his head before Parris Island, and him and Boresheski were in the same 3rd batttalion platoon, and that was the platoon where the kid with spinal menengitis died after being beat up by his drill instructors, and Toby Moffett wet down and started a stink in 76!!
Everyone else from that time period will remember the hullabaloo in the mid 70’s about Parris Island training, well, that was the platoon with 2 guys from my home town and DancUSA and I knew them, but not the guy who had memengitis.
I was on jury duty last year for a murder trial. The killer whacked the killee with a ball-peen hammer. You should see what a ball-peen hammer does to a skull. Definitely a weapon.
The world has truly gone insane. I carried a pocket knife at least that big when I was in fourth grade. All the boys carried knives and sometimes the teacher would borrow a knife from one of us. This insanity must be stopped somehow.
BINGO! I graduated from Guilderland Central HS many years ago and while there many of the kids carried pocket knives and had guns in their cars so they could go hunting before or after school.
I actually heard from the reporter that he talked to congressman Tonko and that his office knows of the situation and that they talked to West Point already and were told this "issue" won't be a problem for Matt.
So, at least we have good news on that front. Keep up the pressure on the school district and make them miserable. I expect that they'll have a media nightmare to deal with next week once FOX and others start calling them.
Know what? I am past the point of wanting to talk about this kind of crap.
Pretty soon enough others will be too, and some power hungry intellectually lazy administrator type is going to pull this baloney on the wrong guy.
And said administrator will get the crap beat out of him followed by dancing in air whilst dangling under a lamp post.
And I will rejoice upon hearing the news of it.
Here’s a link to the video. Perhaps some freeper with a youtube or liveleak account could post it to get some more widespread attention.
The military trusts this kid with an M-4 carbine but he can’t have a 2 inch pocket knife in a survival kit in his car? Time to call the ACLU!
An entrenching tool makes a nice field expedient weapon too.
The very existence of "zero tolerance policies" speaks volumes about the incompetence of today's school administrators. They demand big paychecks while shunning every situation where the exercise of good judgment would be of value. You might has well hire a barely literate bum off the street with instructions to follow the "zero tolerance" policies without deviation.
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