An 11-year-old Virginia boy was punished for reporting a classmate for having a bullet at school because, according to administrators, he waited too long to do so. St. John the Apostle Catholic School in Virginia Beach suspended a sixth grader for 1½ days for waiting about two hours to report a bullet his friend had shown him, said Tim Anderson, a lawyer representing the boy and his mother Rachel Wigand, says the Washington Post. News of the boy’s punishment led to threats of violence against St. John’s, a two-day closure of the Catholic School and the arrest of a man in North Carolina accused of making the threats, while administrators tried to reassure parents who might find the whirlwind “deeply unsettling.”
School officials defended the punishment, saying they held the boy accountable for a delay that could have catastrophic consequences if not relayed to adults, citing the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., that killed four and injured nine. Anderson contended that punishing the boy for “doing the right thing” makes the school less safe by disincentivizing students from coming forward. “The message it sends is, instead of ‘See something, say something,’ the kids are better off not saying anything,” Anderson said, adding that “it’s creating a more dangerous environment.” The Catholic Diocese of Richmond defended punishing the boy. “The school’s culture of safety requires that students and adults alike report potential threats as quickly as they are made aware of them; in a real emergency, gaps in reporting time — especially hours-long gaps — could have major consequences for school safety,” the diocese said.
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