My Son the Porn King

Well, *this* post should get some interesting hits.

Wednesday I was helping a friend pattern a boat cover (he has a custom canvas business), when my cell rang. It was Mark. His dad made him call. Apparently Mark had gotten caught at school accessing some "inappropriate images" on the laptop. He had a detention the next day and his father and I had a conference with the principal.

Turns out that Mark had been utilizing some "very creative" methods to get around the school's filter so that he could get to "pornographic" websites. (I've put quotations on pornographic because I don't actually know what the sites are, although from the principal's descriptions of them, I'd have to agree they probably are.) He had created a folder of them, which he had named with a harmless title, so it wouldn't attract attention.

So there was a meeting with the principal, with Mark, where we could tell him how angry and disappointed we were, and how he had betrayed everyone's trust, and how it had been particularly hard for people because it was Mark, and he had always been such a good boy, etc etc. The principal also was concerned that this might be a major issue for Mark where he might have an addiction, because this wasn't the first time he had had this problem at school. (Last year he was apparently googling the Sims, and inappropriate images came up on the Google search, and he clicked on them...he lost the laptop, just before the Academic Fair, for which he had created a web site on his research topic of the Internet. He was granted supervised permission for his laptop to be available for the presentation, but then it was taken back away.)

So. He had a detention (one detention, for 45 minutes), and he has to have a meeting with the guidance counselor, and he has lost his laptop privileges. It wasn't determined by the time of our conference how long this restriction would last or under what conditions he would regain the privileges. We'll be given that information later, in writing. [I suggested the possibility of disabling his wireless, so that he would have to actually "plug in" to access the Internet, and so he'll be right there under a teacher's nose while he's online. They're going to look into that.]

Altogether, I was a little disappointed at the light punishment Mark received from the school for what they indicated was a severe infraction. There was a lot of talk about what would happen if this occurred again, but I'm sorry, if it's severe enough to warrant a parent-principal conference, I would at least expect a day of in-school suspension. I think everyone is trading on 8 years of "good Mark." If it had been a kid who routinely caused trouble, there'd probably be some major repercussions.

On the other hand, his father and I have passed down some harsh stuff at home. No Internet, of course (although he had already lost that privilege some weeks ago, when I found him googling inappropriate stuff here at home...this was not a new or surprising thing for me, to get the call at school, although I had hoped that he had learned his lesson here...apparently not.). In addition, he's basically under house arrest until the end of the calendar year, including loss of all electronics. (His father, who originally wanted to "kick Mark's ass," has already asked me if we can at least give back the TV, because "Mark will go crazy without TV," which really means that X will go crazy if *he* can't watch TV around Mark. Way to stick to your guns, X.)

The school's going to do some pretty thorough laptop checks now for the entire middle school. They've also already talked to each class again about laptop rules (not mentioning Mark's name, of course, although I'm sure his bright-red face gave him away).

So, oh joy. It's been a week. mk

***much later note:
It was officially decided that Mark's laptop privileges have been revoked until the kids return from Christmas vacation on January 2nd. He won't get internet privileges back until the end of the 2nd quarter, January 26th. The meeting with the guidance counselor: she called me and told me that she didn't believe that Mark was "addicted" to searching out inappropriate images. She didn't see anything that indicated a real and true problem, in her opinion. So he's not a psycho or anything. mk