ACLU Defends Budding Horror Writer

When 11-year-old Dylan Finkle told his parents that he wanted to watch one of the sequels to "Halloween," the horror movie classic, they didn't think much of it. After all, Dylan's mother, Beth, recalled that she started enjoying that genre of scary movie when she was about Dylan's age.

Nor did the Finkles become concerned when Dylan decided to write a novel based on the teenage slasher movie in a writing journal for English class. Mrs. Finkle even said Dylan could give the killer his own name and other characters the names of some of his classmates, as long as he checked with them first. He said he would.

So it came as quite a shock to the Finkles when they were called into the principal's office at the H. B. Thompson Middle School in Syosset last month and were told that Dylan would be suspended from school for making written threats of violence. Dylan was barred from the school for more than six weeks.

The New York Civil Liberties Union also plans to file a federal civil-rights suit on Dylan's behalf charging that the Syosset school district denied Dylan his First Amendment right to free speech and his right to due process. Dylan's suspension pits his right to write the kind of fiction he wants to write against what the school district sees as its responsibility to protect its students, and it is unmistakably colored by the realities of the post-Columbine world that school administrators now face.

"Even if this story was some type of veiled threat - and that would be a real reach - you don't punish the kid and keep him from school,'' Mr. Finkle said. "You get him help. I can't see that the suspension served any purpose whatsoever."

Dylan started writing his novel, titled "Costume Party," on Oct. 1, and in two days had polished off 10 chapters. Students in his English class urged him to read some of it aloud on Oct. 6, and Dylan said that even his English teacher "didn't have a problem with it."

The story describes a boy named Dylan at H.B.T. Middle School "who adored his teachers like he enjoyed honey," but who was "bullied and pushed around by everyone bad enough to be evil."

The Dylan in the story decides to incorporate plots from horror movies into a scheme for revenge. As in the "Halloween" movies, the killer dons a plain white mask, knives and bullets fly at unsuspecting targets, and bodies are found in pools of blood.

Dylan said that other than sharing his name, he had nothing in common with the main character of his novel. "He just has my name - there's nothing about him that's like me at all," Dylan said. "I just thought it would be neat to take one of these movies and change the setting."

Three periods after Dylan first started reading his novel aloud, he said, he was preparing to read more of it to friends in his Latin class when the teacher interceded. She read some of the entries and decided to bring his journal to the attention of school administrators, he said. He was called to the school psychologist's office, where he was asked if he had bad dreams, if he wanted to hurt anybody and if he felt lonely. He answered no, he said, but by the end of the day he had been suspended.

Mr. Murray, the Finkles' lawyer, contends that the school district violated Dylan's rights on many levels. "The fundamental thing is they told him to create a journal where he could write whatever he wanted,'' he said, "but then they severely punish him when they don't like the contents."

Source: The New York Times