The first of the fallout from the Va Tech shooting has hit the field of writing.  A high school student in Cary, Ill. was arrested for a creative writing essay that his teacher found ‘disturbing’.  The essay has not been released, so far as I know, but some of the content has been reported in the Northwest Herald, and may have warranted concern.

But was a misdemeanor called for?  Would it do any good, had the kid been a potential shooter?  And who gets the final say in what qualifies as ‘disturbing’?  In this case, the teacher asked for an assignment that showed emotion–what did s/he think he would get from a bunch of psyched-up teens with all kinds of news on their minds?

I’m also a bit surprised that no one (to my knowledge) has brought up writing for therapy as it could apply to this situation and others like it.  If the boy showed signs of being mentally unsafe, surely counselling with his parents or some such response would be more helpful than slapping him with a misdemeanor.

But the biggest question is, where will the line be drawn?  If disturbing writing is a crime, at least half the the world’s screenwriters need to be locked away, almost all horror writers, and we’d best dig up the remains of such notables as Edgar Allan Poe and lock up their remains while we’re at it.