A Chinese student was transferred from his high school to an "alternative education center" (?) after his parents found he had designed a Counterstrike mod with maps based on his school. Two parents learned of the map he made from their kids, and they informed his parents, who in turn reported him to the Fort Bend Independent School District administrators.
The FBISD authorities determined that he was a Level 3 terroristic threat, which is when a student "engages in conduct relating to a false alarm or report (including a bomb threat) or a terroristic threat involving a public school." Any Level 3 threat requires mandatory transfer to the alternative education center.
The local Chinese community was incensed, saying that all the boy did was make a map, and that searching his home, transferring him from his school and denying him the chance to attend graduation was an excessive reaction to the situation. Several FBISD trustees criticized the board for punishing a student for something that took place off-campus, but administrators feel very confident that they made the right decision. Speaking for the FBISD, Mary Ann Simpson said:
Is it fair for the school authorities to have been concerned? Yeah, probably. When it comes to kids ending up dead, better safe than sorry, and it's certainly possible that the student mapped the school with some nefarious notions running through his head. It's also possible that he simply used the school as the basis for his mod because it was big enough to make a decent map and he was intimately familiar with its layout. There's caution and there's overreaction; if we start booting every kid who's ever drawn a picture of his school, soon there won't be anyone left roaming the hallways.
One also has to wonder if the school's reaction was at all affected by the fact that the student in question, like the Virginia Tech shooter, was Asian. Naturally, they vehemently deny that his ethnicity had anything to do with how they handled the situation, and hopefully that's the case, but it's foolish to think that it didn't at least cross their minds.
Computer Game Violence Level, Confiscated Swords Led to Student's Removal [Fort Bend Now, via Next-Gen]
