DKL

HEX APPEAL

Jamie Schoonover ,a 15-year-old high school freshman at Southwestern High School in Baltimore, was sent home from school recently for a rather unusual reason—casting a spell on another student.

Calling it "the first case I’ve seen like this in 29 years," ninth grade principal Earl L. Lee told The Baltimore Sun that turmoil erupted when an hysterical girl told school officials that a "new girl...who was a witch, who practices Satanism, had cast a spell on her."

Lee summoned Schoonover to his office. After she admitted to practicing witchcraft but denied casting a spell, he decided it was time to contact her parents.

That may or may not have been a good plan.

Schoonover lives with Colleen Harper, "a transsexual who was Schoonover’s father but now calls herself her mother, [and who] has been a practitioner of Wicca for a year, after dabbling in it for about five years."

Harper explained that they would never practice Satanism, "because Satan is a Christian concept and we don’t have anything to do with Christianity." On the other hand, she described Wicca as a benign religious practice, closely associated with nature and nature’s cycles.

And what did Lee think about all this? "We want additional information about this witchcraft, whether it’s a true religion or not. I have to do some further research," he said.

PLANETARY PLEDGE

When school kids in Oak Park, Illinois pledge allegiance to the flag these days, the wording deviates from tradition, says Education Reporter.

According to one teacher, the children pledge allegiance to the flag, because it’s required, "but they pledge allegiance to the planet as well."

This updated pledge goes as follows: "I pledge allegiance to the Earth, this unique blue-water planet, graced by life, our only home. I promise to respect all living things, and to protect to the best of my abilities, all parts of our planet’s environment, and to promote peace among the human family, with liberty and justice for all."

That was too much for Chicago Tribune scribe John Kass, who responded to the politically correct pledge, saying: "It’s possible that kids will confuse the two pledges, but isn’t that the idea? Besides, we won’t need sovereign nations in the new global village. We’ll all ride bikes."

Except for the Chinese. They’ll drive tanks.

VIRTUAL DRUNK

So you’re sick of the usual Friday nights and want to start getting responsible about those all-too-frequent college soirees? Log onto Alcohol 101, an educational CD-ROM put out by the U. of Illinois, that puts students in the driver’s seat and urges them to be more responsible about drinking.

First, the program asks for basic stats, height, weight, how much you had to eat before the party, your mood, etc. Then, a virtual guide takes you through a virtual party, asking you to make decisions along the way. Throughout the evening, you can observe some unfortunate things that happen to those on the "Reality Wall," the "Rave Room"—or let your hair down at the "Virtual Bar."

The "Virtual Bar" is of course the best part, since it is fully stocked with everything from Long Island Iced Tea and wine coolers to malt liquor and grain alcohol. Once you "pick your poison," you can also decide how to drink it, i.e., take 40 minutes to "sip" a drink; drink it (20 minutes) or slam (one minute).

Some sobering decisions can result from how you choreograph what happens to stereotypical party guests, e.g., the hard-drinking high school senior "T.J.," who drives naive and unsuspecting party guest Katie home, because she’s drunk.

Will "T.J." take advantage of a tailor-made situation—or do the honorable thing?

TENURE 1, KNOWLEDGE 0

Forget Monopoly. Now you have "Survival of the Witless," the new academic board game based on the premise that "knowledge is nothing, tenure is everything."

Spearheaded by a former college history teacher, the game’s overriding goal is gaining tenure, described as "the key to fame, wealth, happiness and most importantly, to never having to put in a single day’s work again." The professor/game creator, who labored at a large Southern university, said that since he hasn’t been able to get tenure himself, he’d prefer to remain anonymous in case he wants to try again.

Players soon discover that in order to win, one has to curry favor with such academic stereotypes as "R. Jackson Wentworth, who has not taught a course since Herbert Hoover was President; Lana Wong, who is facing multiple sexual harassment suits; and Ricardo Bergamo, who has spent a career recycling his one semi-famous book."

Players take turns at pulling cards. Some of the most desirable cards bear sentiments that advance one’s career by getting "published in the ‘New York Review of Each Other’s Books,’ getting a cherished research grant or having your course load reduced."

Savvy players discover that the most valuable card is one showing a kiss planted on a donkey’s rear. Does this demonstrate the creator’s downbeat experience in the world of political academia? Absolutely. Although he regards the preparation of young people as an honor, he’s irritated and angry at the deadbeats who "view teaching as a secure and a guaranteed paycheck for no work."

INTERNET CHEATERS

According to George Mason University instructor Anne Marchant, the percentage of "patchwork plagiarists" is on the rise. Every semester Marchant nabs at least one student who’s copied and pasted a term paper together from different Internet sources and labeled it as original work. Most of them are dead giveaways, says Marchand, who told The Washington Post that "the introduction will be written in broken English; then it’ll have this flawlessly written, almost doctoral-quality body; then a conclusion that goes back to broken English."

Are students really less honest these days? Maybe not. After all, computer cheating has become a snap. Dozens of websites are devoted to helping students become more effective cheaters.

Back "in the olden days, a student had to go to the library, dig up the information and retype it," said Leon Geyer, a Virginia Tech prof and honors advisor. "Now all you have to do is sit in your dorm room, point and click."

Virginia Tech’s cheating offenses rose from 136 during the 1996-1997 school year to 280 last year, and most of them were computer-related. In one computer science class where students surfed the Net for a term paper, four of them actually chose the same one.

Do polls tell the whole story? Daily Texan scribe Brian Winter commented in a recent issue of the Austin university paper that America’s infatuation with poll results is risky business that threatens individual leadership.

Said Winter: "If opinion polls indicated that the American public wanted President Clinton to pull a jelly-flavored condom over his head and roll around naked in an oversized sandbox while singing [pop star] Alanis Morrisette’s ‘You Oughta Know’ in an affected falsetto, he would probably do it."

JACK & JILL vs. BILL & MONICA

Are kiddies paying attention to the Bill and Monica situation? Absolutely, according to a poll taken by the cable-TV channel Nickelodeon.

Out of 300 kids, ages eight to 14, surveyed, 60 percent of them identified the B&M saga (without prompting) as a "major news story." Meanwhile, only 17 percent said they thought the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa story was big news.

Ninety percent of the youngsters said they had found out about the Bill & Monica tale via TV news. Sixty-seven percent said they regard the Prez less favorably now than before they knew about it. Although 74 percent responded that they thought Clinton was doing an average job, 53 percent said that he wasn’t honest.

Meanwhile, 36 percent of the children said they’d participated in a school discussion about the matter and only 17 percent of their parents said they knew about such in-class discussions.

What did these young respondents think would happen to the Prez? Nearly 58 percent thought he would be censured or impeached while only nine percent believed he would resign.

As a sign of the times, only six percent said they learned about the scandal from their parents while eight percent learned about it from the Internet.