88
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
88 points (100.0% liked)
news
24484 readers
418 users here now
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
-
To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
-
To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
-
To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
-
Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
-
Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
-
American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
-
Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
You are not required to incriminate yourself in this country. He might not know it's his right but it is.
You are required to incriminate others. It's understandable that the school would want to know which kid brought a gun to school, that doesn't mean it's right that they expelled this kid. It's not even necessarily the case that the kid who brought a gun to school meant to do anything harmful with it, which is probably why this kid didn't turn them in. This is just the result of a culture built around the highest rate of incarceration in the world, the harshest punishment is expected in every situation both by those giving it and those receiving it.
You are under no such obligation. You never know what something that someone else has done will or might incriminate you and you cannot be compelled to incriminate yourself. You should protect yourself and others but you and I both know exactly what would have happened to the other kid if he snitched.
You absolutely can be compelled to incriminate others. If incriminating others actually would incriminate yourself, any protection that gives you can be nullified by giving you immunity. Generally, if you refuse to testify when compelled, outside of few circumstances (self-incrimination, various privileges) you can and will be punished. It's important to be clear about this because it's important knowledge for anyone who has to live under the
legal system.
Of course the other kid would have been expelled, see the final sentence of my comment (quoted below).
Whether you could be compelled to give up a peer in this situation in the context of a court (you absolutely could and would be) isn't relevant. It's a flawed premise to analyze this situation through the lens of American law even if that were the case, because American law is not designed to help those involved or provide the best outcome for society. This is a story about children being treated like criminals, we shouldn't be discussing it as though they're literally on trial. None if it would be a problem if not for the environment fostered by schools where students expect the harshest possible punishment rather than adults to work to help them.
If the administration were interested in helping the children, the silence wouldn't be necessary because they children would understand that a classmate with harmful intentions would be helped by the teachers, and a classmate who brought a gun for harmless reasons would simply be told calmly why that isn't acceptable. Instead, you have a country with a carceral obsession creating schools which only know how to punish.
Can be, not are. You are not required to report crimes unless you are a mandatory reporter. Last I checked 11 year olds aren't that.
If you witness a crime, you are not required to report it. However, if it becomes known that you witnessed it, you can be compelled to testify in court. This doesn't apply at all to this situation, but I'm saying it because people who might be in court one day in
should understand it.
Again, the premise of applying this logic to this situation is incorrect. This isn't a court, it's a school. He has no legal rights protecting him from giving up a peer in this context (which means the school could and did expel him), and the correct rights for him to have in an ideal society wouldn't be the ones granted by the American constitution. A school should be a place where children are nurtured and assisted by adults, not a mirror of a system of courts. The fact that this child was treated as a presumed criminal is a failure, which we can only compound by analyzing it with this legalistic framework. These children should not expect to be punished by default, and these adults should not punish them unless absolutely necessary.
In a fight between gun rights and incarceration, incarceration wins.
I wouldn't punish him with expulsion, but it's very important to snitch on a classmate if they are bringing fucking guns to school
You'd be shocked at how often it happens