Angry in the Great White North

A 17-year-old boy, Kevin François, gets a call on his cell phone during school hours. Use of the phone during school hours, even during lunch, as in the case here, is not allowed.

But then this call was from the boy's mother, Sgt. 1st Class Monique Bates, who left in January for a one-year tour in Iraq with the 203rd Forward Support Battalion. Dad has been dead for twelve years.

He went outside to get better reception, and a teacher spotted him. The teacher told him to hang up the phone. Young Kevin says he told the teacher, "This is my mom in Iraq. I’m not about to hang up on my mom." The teacher grabs the phone and causes it to hang up.

At this point the language became more colourful, and so he was trotted off to the office. He went...unwillingly.

But the school in Columbus, Georgia, is going to cut him some slack:

“Kevin got defiant and disorderly,” [Spencer High School assistant principal Alfred] Parham said. “When a kid becomes out of control like that they can either be arrested or suspended for 10 days. Now being that his mother is in Iraq, we’re not trying to cause her any undue hardship; he was suspended for 10 days.”

So that means a kid who mouths off but doesn't have family overseas gets arrested? What, no real crime in Columbus?

So why not call his mom after school?

For François, he said he gets to hear from his mother once a month, and phone calls vary depending on when she can use the phone in Iraq. François said his mother calls as late as 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. and tries to catch him during hours he's awake. He said the phone call Wednesday was the first time she called him while he was at school.

How will affect Kevin?

François, who said he's been struggling with his grades in school, wants to go back to school and finish the rest of his year. He fears he may have pay for summer school because of his punishment.

"My grades had been low, but I was bringing them up. My grades were coming back up. On one of my report cards I had like a 'F' in one of my classes, but I brought it back up to a low 'C.' This just brought me all the way down."

(From the Toronto Sun, the Ledger-Enquirer, and Michelle Malkin)