The Halloween edition of "The Lake Highlands High School Fang" says it all - "Cost of Pranks HIGH." Student journalists there, who produce the school newspaper with the help of faculty advisor Rick Hill, covered the homecoming dance, the success of the tennis team, and local haunted houses. But the story that caught my eye referenced the sentence recently given the boys who brought marijuana-laced muffins to the faculty and staff, dubbed the "Pot Muffin Two" by the article's headline.
The boys, Joseph Tellini and Ian Walker, will be on probation, meaning that they could go to prison for up to 20 years if they mess up again. They must pay thousands of dollars in restitution to the RISD for medical expenses for staff, and they must give 260 hours of community service between them.
But the "cost" of their stupidity is more clearly understood by reading a letter written by Tellini and published by the paper. In it, he talks directly to faculty, staff, and the student body. "I devised and executed a selfish prank, without thinking of the grave consequences of my actions." He details for students some specifics about what his court sentence means, including "losing your right to vote, inability to become a lawyer, ... and an inability to coach your kid's soccer team later down the road." He speaks also about the guilt which "sits inside" him. "There is no plausible way to defend causing pain," he tells students.
Whether Tellini wrote the letter from a sincere sense of shame and regret or whether he wrote it because his lawyer advised him to, the result may be the same - 2000 high school kids in LH will be reading about the high cost of stupid pranks.
I hope it was a sincere letter on the part of the kid; he certainly will be paying a price for years and years because of something that he probably came up with, planned and executed in a matter of a few hours. It's really scary, in a good and bad way, how just a few minutes of idiocy can have such an impact on someone's life. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt — other than he, his buddy and their parents — because of his actions. I hope that the students, reading it in a student paper, take his comments to heart.
Posted by: Rick Wamre | November 02, 2007 at 11:29 AM