Last week, prosecutors in Illinois dropped charges against Allen Lee, the Cary-Grove High School senior who was arrested for writing a violent essay for a class assignment last month: High school essay writer in the clear. He had been charged with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct after his teacher, alarmed by his essay's disturbing content, reported him to administrators, who contacted the police. It's worth mentioning that this was about a week after the Virginia Tech shooting... and Allen happens to be Asian. You think that set off a few red flags? Granted, during this creative writing assignment, Lee chose to write about blood, sex, booze, shooting—all sorts of pleasant stuff. But he made no specific threats against anything or anyone, and other students apparently wrote things just as disturbing. But Allen is the Asian kid. Profiled! Anyway, the charges have been dropped, and Allen graduated last weekend.
On a related note, this article poses an interesting question, presenting a round up of these issues in the last month since the shooting: Are Asian Males Unwilling Targets of Virginia Tech Fallout?
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