High school students play "Beat the Jew" -- officials "We can't do anything. It's not illegal"

[nichomachus]

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20100527/NEWS04/5270311/Anti-Semitic-student-game-spurs-outrage

A game with anti-Semitic elements played by dozens of La Quinta High School students has offended many but isn't illegal, officials said Wednesday.

The game, called “Beat the Jew,” has caused “extreme disappointment,” but the 40 students involved can't be punished because it happened off school property, Principal Donna Salazar said Wednesday.

Those who were offended said something more should be done to teach tolerance.

“We only have three weeks until there's not much you can do about it,” said the 18-year-old La Quinta High student who alerted officials to the game and Facebook page promoting it. She has asked to remain anonymous and is staying home from school out of fear of retribution.

“Some of these kids that have joined the group, they're like the cream of the crop of my class,” she said. “They're going to be the leaders of our future and they feel this way?”

The chase game involved a runner — called a “Jew” — and groups of people chasing in cars — “Nazis.” “The objective for the Jew is to run down Hwy. 111 to a specified checkpoint before the Nazis can catch up to him, tackle him down and capture him,” according to a Facebook page that was taken down on Friday.

[Solly Mack]

1. I'm speechless.

[Blue_Tires]

2. i was hoping this was some twisted "Borat" -style public art satire...

not so...

[joeybee12]

3. Yeah, you can do something, dipshit principal, embarass the hell

out of them...send everyone to an assembly...sound s more like she doesn't want to do something about it.

[RKP5637]

6. Yep, exactly. In my school an assembly would have been called. They put up

with no BS crap like this.

[Kablooie]

37. Put their names in an article on the internet and it will follow them around the rest of their lives

[reggie the dog]

49. why not let the cops know what highway they will be racing down?

[RKP5637]

4. Unbelievable! n/t

[golddigger]

5. The United States has become a...

"Mental Disease."

[RKP5637]

9. I've been thinking similar... each day this country goes further downhill. Ignorant,

rude and cruel. Some of my friends have said the US is becoming (has become) a country of assholes and bullies... I have to concur when I see crap like this. And much of it we will never hear of...

We tolerate hatred far too much in this country and it will erode the future of the US.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Can you "consent" to being marginalized and hunted by a group of "Nazis"?

And I don't buy they can't do anything because it's off school property. They bring it to school with their lunch money as they likely discuss their last "game" with each other.

What if this was "Custer and Indians"? Ku Klux Klan and sharecropper? 9-11 "heroes" and Muslims?

[whathehell]

25. Interesting that you should bring up Custer and the Indians....A video game came out

some time ago..Ten, fifteen years?..in which the object of the "game" was to screw (rape)an Indian woman tied to a post.

If you can believe it, the makers and fans of the game put up quite a fight before agreeing to take it off the market.:eyes: ....I was well into adulthood when I read about it and I could hardly believe it.:wtf:

[EOTE]

28. That was actually close to 30 years ago. Custer's Revenge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer's_Revenge

Came out for the Atari 2600 and is generally reviled as one of the worst games ever. Most of the attention it received only caused it to sell far more copies than it would have otherwise. At the time, there was extremely little regulation of the gaming market.

[Heywood J]

34. You're thinking of this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer%27s_Revenge

It was for the Atari 2600 and came out in 1982.

[guitar man]

39. Can you "consent" to being marginalized and hunted by a group of "Nazis"?

Only if you're Harry Reid. :crazy:

[msongs]

8. another popular game is called smear the queer - aka DADT by our military nt

[notadmblnd]

10. And don't forget Spot the Mexican

Enjoyed by many in the grate State of Arizona.

[nichomachus]

12. They are all related

Once the country officially begins to demonize, marginalize, and depersonalize groups of people, it ends up in games like this.

[izquierdista]

22. That train is never late!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XZQLwDkM84&feature=related about 4 minutes in.

[RKP5637]

17. Excellent point!!! It must be wonderful to be one of the PERFECT people in

the US. This country develops lists of groups of people now to persecute, and it becomes open hunting season. Disgusting.

[RKP5637]

11. Yep, kids see role models and crap like DADT. A paralyzed nation in

doing what is best for ALL of the citizens. We can certainly mobilize war and killing people and the monies involved, but when it comes to helping citizens it's suddenly a roadblock. This happens over and over in this country for many things IMO.

[hfojvt]

13. What a bunch of idiots

Haven't they ever heard of "Logan's run"? Why can't the runner be Logan?

Then again, why would they have heard of a TV movie from the 1970s?

When I was a kid, we used to play a game at school called "kill the carrier" - the objective being to chase and tackle whoever had the ball. No carriers were ever really killed. In fact, I think the game was less dangerous than the soccer we used to play which had no rules.

[Soylent Brice]

14. how fucking stupid can people possibly be.

please don't answer. i'm starting to figure it out.

[nichomachus]

18. This is a country where a semi-literate, petty thief from Alaska is considered presidential material

That's how stupid we can be

[Soylent Brice]

23. your post makes me sad. n/t

[RKP5637]

20. In the US? Stupidity goes beyond infinity! n/t

[mikelgb]

15. Attention seeking kids FTW... they got what they wanted.

The positions in their game could have been called anything. They attached buzzwords and put it on facebook for attention.

They are getting it.

[nichomachus]

16. I'll bet they could do something if it were "Beat the Christian"

They would find a way to stop that.

[tularetom]

19. I guess we aren't doing a very good job of teaching history in our high schools

If a bunch of asshole kids can make a joke out of a bunch of "Nazis" chasing and capturing a "Jew" they haven't really grasped the gravity of the Holocaust.

OTOH, we adults have cheapened the term by calling everybody with whom we disagree politically, a "Nazi". And we all do it. I mean gimme a break. Rush Limbaugh? He's a piece of shit, but a Nazi? O'Reilly? Beck? Bush? Dick Cheney? OK, bad example. But it's true and it occurs on both ends of the political spectrum. We've all seen the posters of Obama with a Hitler mustache.

If "Nazi" becomes a word we can toss around like that, should we really be surprised when kids start using it?

[snooper2]

24. You hit the nail on the head, the word has been minimized

You hear the left use it on the right and the right use it on the left. Continually...for years and years..

[Brickbat]

21. I had never heard of "smear the queer" until Mr. Brickbat told me he played it in school, and at my

kids' birthday party I heard kids playing "smear the queer." It's another name for "kill the carrier," mentioned upthread.

[Scuba]

26. Do you think their parents are conservatives or liberals?

[slampoet]

27. Good, then No one will mind me Beating the School Officials.

Beating anyone is illegal in every county in this country and they fucking know it.

[petronius]

29. We played smear the queer, but that was before we knew what

queer meant as an epithet (as far as we were concerned, it rhymed).

These high schools students need to be corrected, and if nothing else the school can sit them all down in the auditorium and give them a pre-graduation talking to about bigotry and the expectations of adulthood...

[Angry Dragon]

30. It seems the real teachers today are

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, bigoted political leaders, some so called "christian" churches, and others that fall into this realm.

They teach at the school of hate and fear. They teach that anyone that is different than you is bad and evil. They teach that by looking at one's color of skin you can tell that they are bad for society. Their school fight song is HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE...........

THEY TEACH BIGOTRY AND INTOLERANCE.........Perhaps it is time to turn the tables on them and tell them we will no longer tolerate them.

[Echo In Light]

31. "Next on..."

[mikelgb]

33. thanks for the memory

[Echo In Light]

41. All season Daria dvd out just recently!

http://www.amazon.com/Daria-Complete-Animated-Tracy-Grandstaff/dp/B0019N8P2W

[Goblinmonger]

32. So where are the free speech defenders that were here

during the Border Patrol et al shirts on May 5?

[WinkyDink]

38. People can adhere to the Constitution and yet be appalled. Get over yourself.

[onenote]

45. I'll take you up on that challenge.

First, let me be clear: its an incredibly offensive, stupid game.
Second, its not illegal nor should it be illegal. The first amendment protects individuals rights to be offensive and stupid.
Third, schools should not be in the business of punishing or otherwise taking action against students for the offensive and stupid, but legal, things that they say or do unrelated to school events. Indeed, the law already goes too far in letting schools take action against students for speech that the school deems offensive or inappropriate when it occurs in connection with a school event, even if it occurs off school property. See, e.g, the Bong Hits For Jesus case as an example of how the courts already allow the schools too much leeway in this regard.
Fourth, and finally, it should not be the business of the public schools (an extension of state authority) to publicize and embarass the kids who were involved. That is and should be the business of the media. A local paper should assign a reporter and should investigate and run an article about the event, identifying those involved. I'd suggest that the school paper do it but, as mentioned, the courts already alloow schools too much authority to censor student speech and the student paper might not be allowed to publish the names (and that decision might, unfortunately, be upheld).

[Heywood J]

35. Facepalm.

ETA: On further thought, use this as proof they shouldn't have passed their history courses. In most places, not having a history credit is grounds for not graduating that year. That way, they can do a special summer-school course about the Holocaust.

[fascisthunter]

36. has anyone performed a study to see if there is a correlation between the uprising of bigotry

or hate crimes and the advent of the right spouting their racist shit on the radio across the country?

[GodlessBiker]

40. Schools can stop a lesbian from going to her prom, but they can't stop this? Assholes.

[eShirl]

42. I don't think schools should have the authority to punish for what doesn't happen at school.

nor employers for what doesn't happen at the workplace

[onenote]

43. +1

[JVS]

47. I agree. Those kids are scumbags, but if they're scumbags on their own time then I don't see why...

the school should intervene.

[JoeyT]

44. Good thing no pictures turned up of them holding signs in a protest

off school campus that promoted the end of the drug war.
Otherwise we'd see some hardcore zero tolerance measures.
The school would find they could do plenty about THAT.
They were only mock killing minorities, so they should be ok.

[onenote]

46. neither you nor I have any basis for concluding that the school would have done nothing

if this had taken place at a school event. The Bong Hits for Jesus case, which I believe was wrongly decided, at least was limited to action taken by the school with respect to what the court found was a school-sponsored activity (attendance at the Olympic torch parade) held during school hours.

If this case involved the game being played during a school sponored event, I'd agree with you. But it didn't, so you're just speculating.

[JoeyT]

48. That's fair enough.

If they'd been spied on eating Mike and Ikes while sitting on their bed through a webcam that wasn't supposed to be turned on at all they'd have been punished. Or smoking weed in their room through the same cameras. Or had stuff on their Facebook page about drug legalization. Then the school would've punished them.