Is graffiti worse than prostitution?
By RICK CASEY
http://www.chron.com
If four eighth-grade girls at a Cy-Fair middle school had been found with a couple of ounces of marijuana, or had stolen $1,400 from a house near the school, or had engaged in prostitution, they would have committed a misdemeanor.
But they did none of these things. They wrote on the girls' bathroom wall.
So they face felony charges.
In Texas, graffiti with a Sharpie on a school wall is a more serious crime than carrying a switchblade, making a terroristic threat, burglarizing a vehicle, committing a second DWI, stalking, or assault causing bodily harm.
It's part of our efforts to criminalize childhood.
Handcuffed, hauled off
The mothers of two of the girls, with whom I spoke, agree that their daughters did wrong and should be punished.But arrested on campus, handcuffed and taken in a squad car to be booked, photographed and fingerprinted?
Both mothers, Noelle Jackson and Christie Mathieu, said their daughters are A and B students who are not troublemakers.
In fact, they are literally choir girls. The trouble began Dec. 1 when the choir teacher failed to show for after-school practice. While waiting for the late bus home, the girls went into the bathroom where, they told their mothers, graffiti was already scrawled on the walls and ceiling. They decided to add their own.
Stronger than 'I love Alex'
Jackson's daughter told her mother she wrote, "We run this sh--."She said two other girls wrote, "Hi ladies," and "Wipe before you leave."
The worst, said Jackson, was one that wrote, "(Girl's first name and last initial) is a big-azz ho."
Mathieu said her daughter wrote in pencil on the toilet roll holder. This is not a felony because it's not in permanent ink, but Mathieu said she was told her daughter is being charged because she was with the other girls "and didn't rat on them."
A spokeswoman for the school district said federal school privacy law prevents them from discussing details, but the amount of graffiti was worse than the mothers described, and the content was "much stronger" than a similar incident in the Katy ISD last year.
In that case a 12-year-old wrote "I love Alex" on a gym wall. The DA declined to prosecute, but the district sentenced her to four months in the district's alternative center.
After a public outcry, Katy officials lowered her punishment to writing an apology to the maintenance director and thanking him for cleaning the wall, and making posters promoting clean schools.
But the mothers of the Cy-Fair 8th graders said school officials apparently based their punishment on assuming the girls were lying about what little they had written.
Matthieu said she obtained an e-mail a 7th-grader wrote to a friend admitting she and two others had already defaced the walls and gloating that the 8th-graders were taking the rap.
The message read in part: "well we found out today that we didnt get caught. (: they said they cught the ppl who did and they said that it these four eighth graders. bahha but it was really us three. yeahh they also said that those four girls got arrested and sent to juvii."
Matthieu said she showed the e-mail to the principal, not to get the other girls punished but in hopes of getting a more reasonable punishment for her daughter and her friends.
Instead, she says, she understands that the 7th graders are now also facing felony charges. I was unable to confirm that.
State law also requires that any student charged with a felony be sent to the district's alternative learning center. The 8th graders will be there for six weeks.
Matthieu and Jackson are worried about the effect on their daughters' grades and their performance on the upcoming TAKS test.
"My daughter has been there two weeks and she hasn't come home with a book yet," Matthieu said.
I don't know the full extent of the graffiti or who wrote what, but there is no rational reason for the Legislature to make all graffiti in a school a felony.
The punishment should not be administered by the criminal justice system, but by the school.
The law should provide that school punishment be designed to further educate children, not hurt their education.
The amount and tone of the graffiti should determine just how many Saturdays the girls spend cleaning restrooms. That would, at the least, teach the girls appreciation for the noble work of janitors.
Making graffiti in a school a felony is a dumb law. But the principal is not required to call the cops. And the DA is not required to accept the case.
Such outlandish punishment is not teaching the girls responsibility. It's teaching them to distrust authority.
You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com
