Student Arrested for Making Videogame Map of School 998
tanman writes "A student at the Houston-area Clements High School was arrested, sent to an "Alternative Education Center" and banned from graduation after school officials found he created a video game map of his school. School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'. ' "They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.' With an upcoming May 12 school board election, this issue has quickly become political, with school board members involved in the appeal accusing each other of pandering to the Chinese community in an attempt to gain votes."
Understood... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I never went through with it, because Columbine was still fresh in everyone's memory, and I was afraid that exactly this sort of thing would happen.
It's not a fear of terrorism that drives this sort of thing, or even a fear for our children. It's a fear of our children. We're so scared of the little guys that the instant they bring school into their video game hobby, we freak out.
This kid doesn't deserve to be arrested. He doesn't deserve to be thrust into "Alternative Education". He deserves to have someone ask him why he built the school in a video game. Let a psychologist evaluate him, and then either medicate the kid or let him go back to class.
(And someone should offer him constructive criticism on his level building techniques.)
Oh, For Christ's F***ing Sake... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, that's right: never.
I'd read the article, but it's been Slashdotted.
A bit of an overreaction (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but the idea of creating a school map for you and your friends to play is something that goes back as far as Doom. Kids create these environments because they're familiar, not because they want to go shooting up the place. Only Jack Thompson believes that unbalanced people "train" for killing on these games. The truth of the matter is that ole' Jack is full of sh*t. His claim on Fox news that a previous shooter had created maps of his school turned out to be bunk. He had created maps for Counter Strike, but nothing even vaguely related.
If this map disturbed parents (which is an understandable concern given recent events), then the school's action should have been to evaluate the individual, not immediately kick him out of school. Pretty much all of the shooters in recent history were known to be mentally unbalanced prior to the shootings. An evaluation of the individual's mental state and school records would clarify if he was a threat or not. If not (which it doesn't sound like in this case), you ask them to discontinue the behavior, delete the maps, and go about school as usual. But instead, we give these kids a real reason to hate the faculty. Way to go guys.
I [heart] Houston. (Score:3, Insightful)
Linky? (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is important how? (Score:5, Insightful)
In Russia, government hammers you (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was going to high school, we had war games. Not simulated, but real - in person, on campus. And it was not the idea of some demented student, it was organized by the PE coaches.
The gym was one fort, the bleachers on the eastern side of the football field were the other. Each structure had a hose nearby. The gave us a bunch of balloons, and we had water balloon wars.
To the best of my knowledge, none of my classmates has committed any mass murders in the several decades since then.
I worry that policies as mentioned in TFA may actually increase violent incidents like Va tech. We were allowed - even encouraged - to burn off frustrations in acts of simulated violence. Then we dried off, went back to class, and were rather good students.
Today, young men are being denied symbolic outlets for violence. It come as no surprise to me that Chu did what he did. I worry that there will be more.
They Found a Hammer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Goldeneye (Score:3, Insightful)
Oops. Brought up airports and level design in the same topic. My name just moved up a few spaces on the govt. list. Better leave some extra time next time I fly. After all, these games are only functional as "simulators", right?
Re:They Found a Hammer? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not sure about the lawnmower.
Developers do this all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA: "Speakers at the FBISD Board's April 23 meeting alluded to the Clements senior's punishment, and drew a connection to the April 16 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in which a Korean student shot and killed 32 people."
In which video games *WERE NOT INVOLVED*. But that clearly doesn't matter. Something bad happened involving people under the age of 21, and as such video games must be at the heart of it.
-lw
Psychos... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, For Christ's F***ing Sake... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is par for the course in this part of the United States. Ignorance, fear and xenophobia run rampant, white men run everything, and opportunism prevails at every turn. Police forces are treated as a paramilitary force, and zero tolerance is the rule in schools - even though it only means that more kids every year get fewer chances at straightening up and becoming successful.
Louisiana (and other population-losing red states) wonder why it's best and brightest move away as soon as they finish college - crap like this is the reason why.
If any high school students are reading this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please take heart. Not all of us adults are such utter fucking morons.
Not that you'd know it from the comments on the article, where a depressing number of people say they hope he has learned from his "mistake."
I bet he has. He's learned to keep his activities secret from the authorities if he values his freedom. He's learned a little bit about what it's like to live in an increasingly paranoid, authoritarian society, where innocuous activities that harm nobody can get one declared an enemy of the people. He's learned that politicians have no compunctions about advancing their own careers by ruining the lives of the people they supposedly serve.
His mistake wasn't making the map. If FPSes had been around when I was in high school I would have loved to play on a map of the school; unlike a bunch of adults, it seems, I understood and understand the difference between video games and reality. His mistake was not being sufficiently clandestine when he shared it with his friends. Hopefully he will take this as a valuable lesson about the value of covering his tracks thoroughly in his daily life.
Re:They Found a Hammer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, this is a freedom of speech issue plain and simple. Maybe he made this map so he could play in a familiar setting. Maybe he wanted to try and just recreate something he knew. Maybe he really did fantasize about walking in and just shooting up lots of fake teachers and students in a game. The bottom line though, is that this is a game. It's fantasy, and having somewhat violent fantasies is normal for a large percentage of the population. It doesn't mean that they are planning on hurting anyone, or would hurt anyone; it just helps as an outlet for aggression.
Bottom line: kid makes a game map of the school, then who cares. Kid plays that map, then who cares. If the kid plays and is constantly saying "Just wait, ya'll are gonna get it one day.", then do some counseling and see what's up. If he buys 10 boxes of ammunition, a handgun, has a printed copy of the map, AND other evidence that he is going to be be attacking the school, THEN you start to get the cops involved.
hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I have one question for the school board. Did they bother to make sure that he weighs as much as a duck before they took action against him?
Re:Understood... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just why should he be evaluated or asked about what he's done?
It's not in any way strange to apply your day-to-day experiences to hobbies and fantasies.
I wrote a text adventure in my youth where large parts of the layout was based on my school and public library. A classmate won an award for the painted plywood model he built of our school. No-one sent either of us to psych eval.
What this guy needs is for people to give him a fucking break. It's his school, and his knowledge about its layout is his to do whatever the hell he wants with.
As for the police confiscating potential weapons, that's worse than any police state I've ever heard of.
I say that Condoleezza Rice has several potential weapons in her office, and she could potentially go on a murder spree in the White House. Since you can't prove otherwise, now go lock her up. Or set this kid and anyone else who's been arrested for potential (i.e. thought) crimes free, and erase their bloody records.
Re:Understood... (Score:4, Insightful)
me too (Score:3, Insightful)
who didn't?
* I want to create something
* Hey look, a tool to create something
* Crap, what do I make?
* Well, I'm in school all day, so I'm pretty familiar with that.
* Arrested.
I have a solution to this problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally, I would oppose such a suggestion. Were the US run like typical European democratic-socialists the schools would probably be responsibly managed. But with one political party fighting to destroy public education, and the other party in the pocket of the public school bureaucracy, there's no voice left for the kids being ruined by these bullshit political non-events.
I honestly think government can do a good job of providing basic public services. But right now, the US government cannot. At least not until the leaders of our political parties come to some basic consensus on the role of government. Until then, it will be one crazy situation after another as they duke it out. All while citizens and their kids get fucked by the very public institutions that were ostensibly created for their benefit.
Spiderman 3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the devs terrorists?
This is a reactionary response (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to this a mix of fascist officials and craven lawmakers who choose to ignore rights in search of appearing to address the security problem (insert Ben Franklin quote here).
You're right, it's a culture of fear, but it goes beyond our children. It's the technology and to a large extent, a media-inspired culture of fear... of EVERYTHING.
Re:Understood... (Score:2, Insightful)
Next they're going to go after Microsoft because they're flight simulator is an obvious terrorist training program. Did you know you can crash planes in it? Good God! And their programmers that made the maps of realistic US locations were found with letter openers at their desks. Everyone panic!
Re:Understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
Child 1: Dude - look at this cool map I made for [insert game name here]
Child 2: Dude! It's amazing. That's so cool.
Child 1: Yeah.
Child 2: Dude - could you make a map of the school? That would be awesome.
Child 1: Hmm - let's see....
[2 weeks later]
Child 1: Here it is man - what do you think?
Child 2: Dude! Let's upload it and get the rest of the guys to play!
Child 1: m'okay.
[3 months later]
FBISD: You're being creative, and having fun in a way that we don't understand. We don't understand your motivation at that frightens us. You have to be stopped, and corrective action has to be issued to ensure that you don't do other things in the future that we might not understand, or potentially use your creativity in a manner that might bring harm to others, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Child 1:
You know your country is _totally_ screwed (Score:1, Insightful)
a) You can get arrested for "acting suspicious" and owning "potential weapons"
Feel free to add items to this list.
Re:A bit of an overreaction (Score:3, Insightful)
It's even worse than an overreaction (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume for a second that they are right. The guy is violent, mentally unstable and is using his home grown CS map to practice his planned killing spree (which was apparently to be carried out with a hammer). What do they do? They merely transfer him to a different school. In no way, shape or form do any of the school's actions prevent him from entering the school again and carrying out his assumed plans. At best, they've moved the problem to a different place, and put others at risk that hadn't been at risk before. At worst, it really pisses him off, and he escalates his planned violence (pipe bombs really aren't hard to make). Any which way you look at it, the actions of the school and the police were completely irresponsible.
Factor in that the guy had none of these plans to begin with, and you're looking at a massively incompetent school administration, board and police whose only goal is to cover their ass. They don't care whether what they did solved any issues; all they wanted was to have something to point to if the student does go apeshit and the inevitable question of "who's to blame?" rolls around.
The US is going down the shitter, and attitudes like these towards kids and education are the reason why. Way to ruin your future generation.
Re:Understood... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it matter that it was a game that he used instead of drafting software or a pen and paper. what makes him different than a student in a drafting class? For drafting we used autoCAD to map the school. the game was his "free" 3D draft studio.
That alone is not a crime or wrong. I did not read the article any more.
duke nuken 3d did have a simple world designer that was easy to pick up. I had alot of fun with it. That might have been the reason I took drafting classes where we made the same map but to scale this time.
quick, someone go arrest my drafting teacher. he is training terrorists.
I can't believe the number of people... (Score:2, Insightful)
Reprecussions. (Score:3, Insightful)
But did any one think for second what the effect of continually treating children like criminals is? How repeated persecution for fictional crimes desensitizes children. An effect which makes real world incarceration more tolerable and less revolting, in effect training our children to be inmates ready to submit to authority for any reason at a moment's notice. Some might argue that that's the very point of these so called "nanny states".
Perhaps it was given a lot thought, indeed.
Dear America,
Stop sucking.
Your pals,
Voters
Doom 2 map of my high school (Score:2, Insightful)
No one cared. Most thought it was an interesting idea and one teacher had fun shooting himself.
All this on top of the fact that I was a violent kid in high school, constantly got into trouble, and was essentially a troublemaker.
The last place I worked at, I turned my office and surrounding areas into a counter strike source map with the help of another employee. We mapped out the surrounding area which included a police station. The police were suspicious at first, but after explaining where we worked and what the project was, they wanted to play the map. This was only three years ago.
These days North America seems to have descended back into a Salem witch hunt. The slightest notion that you might be a teeny tiny bit off center and suddenly you're arrested, subjected to psychological tests, put on medication by court orders, and for what? To keep the population safe? I certainly didn't kill anyone, in real life, and I certainly don't plan to. Instead, I'll take out my frustration on ragdoll NPCs and/or get laid. Either one works pretty well at preventing me from murder.
Re:Understood... (Score:2, Insightful)
This Crap Makes Me Angry (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither in Columbine or Virginia Tech did the perp(s) practice on a video game, nor in any other such attack that I'm aware of. The authorities are stupid to even contemplate this situation. If the kid is actually up to no good these actions won't stop him anyway. Real terrorists wouldn't make their maps known for fear of actions like this.
Also, I haven't seen mentioned here yet, but it's LEGAL to own a hammer, or a gun for that matter. Posession of a weapon is not probable cause of intent to commit a crime.
I'm of half a mind to make maps of my local schools and put them on the net myself now.
We MUST do something about this sort of abuse. It takes our resources off the real threats and wastes them on a wild goose chase. The authorities are becoming the threat, and fast. When someone can do a perfectly legal activity and still have the wrath of the state come down on them, then the system has gone haywire. They better wise up and fast because this sort of behavior on the part of the state WILL produce the next crop of Timothy McVeigh's.
Re:Understood... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We need revolution and we need it now (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to working on doom and quake levels based on real world locations, I also grew up around guns (with a very healthy respect for them), listened to heavy metal, and was probably considered a non-conformist to most (ie: trench coat and combat boot wearing, angst ridden, KMFDM listening, rivet head-teenager).
Had I gone to school after Columbine or VA Tech, I would have likely been arrested and secured for the safety of society, instead of going on to serve honorably in the US Marine Corps, working in medical research, and raising a family. The real shame here is how this kid's life will forever be changed because of overzealous scaremongers trying to make examples of anyone who doesn't fit in their homogenized view of society.
-Rick
Re:Safely playing out a fantasy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Understood... (Score:5, Insightful)
But really, sending him there is retarded. He's going to be there with a bunch of people who deserve to be there - drug addicts, violent people, unstable people, etc. Hes in danger - hes probably a nerd, and wont be very good at defending himself. ALC's (Alternative Learning Centers) are the worst places to send anyone "good" - its like throwing a kitten into a pack of rabid wolves.
Its hard to say that some people shouldnt be in there - i remember i looked across the room at this guy, and he freaked out, like in the movies:
"What are you looking at?"
"Nothing."
"So what, im nothing to you?"
"No, i was just looking across the room."
"What, im not good enough for you?"
There really are people like that out there, and i unfornately do agree that some people should be in there. That guy was quite ready to severely injure me - had the teacher not told him to shut up, i woulda been hit with a chair.
Of course, zero tolerance is what got me put in the school, and this poor guy is there for the same reason. What it boils down is that Zero Tolerance is what is garbage - and only the unstable nutjobs and hardcore drug addicts should be in ALC's.
-Red
Re:Oh, For Christ's F***ing Sake... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Frightening (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Understood... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you make a map of your school for a first-person shooter:
- Yes.
- No.
- I started to, but didn't finish.
You, I, and I suspect many of the Slashdot population would be in the last category. Most schools are pretty complicated. I cheated a bit and didn't fill in every floor in every building, and skipped most of the furniture, and even then I didn't finish. Anyone who does manage a complete map is probably obsessive-compulsive, and a lot better at 3D art than me (even the bits I did 'finish' didn't look much like the original).Omens (Score:3, Insightful)
The only effective predictor of future violent behavior is past violent behavior. (And by "violent behavior" I mean real, criminal, violence and credible threats of violence against others - not playing video games, laser tag, or football.) Mass murderers don't "just snap". They build up to wholesale violence in a growing series of acts of retail violence and to large law-breaking in a growing series of smaller law-breakings.
Those shooters had all committed MULTIPLE FELONIES and had no serious consequences. If the law had actually been ENFORCED against them they would not have been in a position to go on their final rampages (assuming they didn't straighten out their act the first time they found that breaking the law had consequences).
There's no need to look for "signs" and omens when some kid worries you. Just look for a pattern of CRIMES. If it's there, bust his butt for what he's actually done.
If not (which it doesn't sound like in this case), you ask them to discontinue the behavior, delete the maps, and go about school as usual. But instead, we give these kids a real reason to hate the faculty. Way to go guys.
If not, just leave him the heck alone. He invested a lot of his time building that game level. It's HIS PROPERTY. Force him to delete the maps and you've stolen something from him that cost him months of his life to create - for no purpose than to ease your mind. That, too, will give him a reason to actually, and validly, hate the school authorities.
If you believe you must take his work and destroy it "for a public purpose" (such as calming the hysterics on the school board) the "takings" clause of the Fifth Amendment says you must PAY him for it. What's a fair price? What could such a video game or plug-in bring on the national market?
Meanwhile, there's a very important point to keep in mind: It is NORMAL for people (especially adolescent boys) to fantasize about subjects that include violence, revenge, and war. It's part of deciding how to behave, of surviving threats, and of understanding the world, society, and his place in them. What is NOT normal is to ACT OUT these fantasies outside of the social and legal boundaries. THAT is the distinction between a criminal (including the criminally insane) and normal, law-abiding, upstanding citizens.
Re:Unslashdotted links (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Understood... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unslashdotted links (Score:3, Insightful)
The local Police should play the game (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Understood... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or even the first that isn't really a terrorist, not even a dissenter?
I assure you - that's not the case.
Sad news is - he's probably a pretty smart kid, and now he is fucked for life.
Good luck scoring that academic scholarship and making something of yourself, kid - I genuinely cry a tear for you.
Google training terrorists (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty soon we will see hundreds of campuses mapped in 3D and available everywhere on google maps. How hard would it be to convert the Google 3D data to a CS or Quake map? Not hard at all. I guess Google is supporting the next generation of school shooters eh?
Re:Understood... (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding. An arrest in these circumstances is nothing less than kidnapping and assault. The officers and prosecutors involved deserve to go to jail.
Re:Understood... (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe I'm getting a little carried away here. But I'm just trying to make a point. Almost any object can be turned into a weapon if you think about it. Hell, if you know pressure points you can end someone's life in a gentle touch to the neck. I'm sick of all the paranoid pansies dramatizing everything to the extreme.
I know someone that made a map of my high school with either quake or duke nukem
I'm gonna go make a map of the White House
Re:No scientific evidence, huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
The articles are complete with statistics. Here are links to some of the scientific articles I have read and/or cited.
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/dcwill/www/CMWilliamsSk
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study5.
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study4.
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study%2
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study%2
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study%2
Like I said, other researchers and myself do not firmly believe that video games are not the primary cause for aggressive outbreaks.
Re:Understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like he was a reasonably bright kid, too; if he didn't hate the system and harbor dark fantasies of shooting the place up, I'm sure he will after spending a few months with the dead-enders in an "Alternative" school. (We used to just call them "Juvenile Hall" where I came from.)
Best chance for him is to get out of there with a GED as fast as he can, preferably one that doesn't have the name of that less-than-esteemed institution on it, and then get a job for a few years, and hope some college will look harder at his employment record than it will at his HS diploma. But even then, I doubt most decent private schools will touch him.
They might as well just have tattooed something on his forehead, it would have been cheaper and accomplished basically the same purpose.
Re:This is a reactionary response (Score:5, Insightful)
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
This culture of fear of everything, as you so aptly described it in the post above, wasn't exactly what FDR had in mind when he spoke these words, but I can't help but think how incredibly prescient his words were.
Sigh....
Re:Understood... (Score:5, Insightful)
2. It is not illegal to show maps for a first-person shooter game to someone else.
3. It is not illegal to possess five swords.
4. The board had nothing to react to in the first place.
5. The student committed no crime for which the police could legally arrest him, at least pre-PATRIOT Act.
He, an honor student, was removed from his high school and forced to attend an alternative (read: for delinquents) education center, will not be allowed to receive his diploma with the rest of his class, and will probably have difficulty, if not being accepted to, at least getting financial aid for a good college. All because he went to a school staffed and parented by a group of reactionary morons.
How should the school have handled it? There's nothing to handle. When/if parents complained, the appropriate authority figures should have repeated my response to #1: "It is not illegal to create game maps for a first-person shooter game."
-1 Speculation (Score:2, Insightful)
If you can find some evidence of other problems this guy had in school then I'll take that into consideration. Right now, you have nothing to back up the claim that: "Almost certainly this guy had a history and the video game aspect has been brought to the foreground by journalists for some other reason." Yeah, it's possible....maybe even probable.....but nobody has any info on that so I think it's premature to state that nobody should take this article seriously.
Re:Understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Understood... (Score:2, Insightful)
This kid doesn't deserve to be arrested. He doesn't deserve to be thrust into "Alternative Education". - should have quit while you were ahead.
He DOES NOT deserve to have anyone question him at all. There is Z-E-R-O reason to believe that this act alone makes him a threat in any way whatsoever. Period. He doesn't need to be examined for a faulty brain nor does he deserve to be medicated - give me a frigin' break.
Thanks evangelical's, Jack Thompson, George Bush, political--for-gain and all of you parents out there who should never have been allowed to procreate for creating our current so-called "free" society. You've all been a great help in continuing to destroy everything we stand for.
Wait a minute! (Score:2, Insightful)
Those sites are conspiracy-monger sites, and this man cannot even write using proper English.
Mods, do your jobs and moderate!
Re:This is a reactionary response (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Understood... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:in lumping in drug-addicts with violent people (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from that, i do think that the restrictions put on pot are pretty stupid - putting a pot smoker into ALC would be just as stupid as putting the guy the story is about in ALC. Thats doesnt make smoking pot "ok", but that does make overzealous punishment "idiotic".
Besides, ANY mind altering act (be it sex, drugs, alchohol, anything) done to get away from emotional pain will always get worse. Doing it for fun or socially is fine - just like drinking alchohol, its ok in moderation.
Speaking of moderation, maybe you outta give it a try. Lay off the speed.
-Red
Re:Understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you implying that careful attention to detail and commitment to completing a project is obsessive-compulsive behaviour?
Re:This is a reactionary response (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tell them how you feel (Score:1, Insightful)
People who become accustomed to the unchallenged power that comes with being a school administrator must be reminded frequently and forcibly that there is a world outside those walls, and they are being watched.
standard hatred (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank god there are ways to let go of our frustrations and hatreds. The ways we do it have changed. We live in the computer era.
Re:Understood... (Score:4, Insightful)