I just got off the phone with a producer at CBS News in New York. She called me for help covering a story the network is planning. I frequently assist the network radio and television broadcasts when major news happens in the St. Louis region.

You know. Big stories.

Tornado Strikes. Kidnapped Boys Found Alive. Cardinals Win World Series. Passenger Train Derails.

Big stories with worldwide appeal.

This time, CBS News wanted information about the Megan Coulter case. She's the eighth grader in Mascoutah, Ill., who was punished with two after school dententions for hugging two friends, a girl and a boy. By all accounts, the hugs were nothing but innocent, friendly hugs between young children.

When I asked principal Bob Stone about the case earlier this week, he refused to say anything at all. He was stone-faced.

Superintendent Sam McGowan refused to do an on-camera interview, but he told me by phone: "Once you let hugging go, you know what'll happen."

What exactly?

"You tell me what's permissible and not permissible in hugging," McGowan said. "Our principals were enforcing school policy."

So why does CBS News in New York care about this? It's probably the same reason why the Associated Press distributed the story nationally to thousands of newspapers and other media outlets. You can find it on hundreds of web sites.

With so many scary stories these days about gang violence, guns, and bomb threats in American schools, it seems wrong to punish innocent children for practicing a basic form of human decency.

I had more to write here, but I've just been assigned a story about a high school student getting caught with a gun in school.

Seriously.

2 Comments

Anonymous said:

There is always more to the story than reported in the news. Of course parents are going to leave out parts. Did the parents read the handbook? Do the parents enforce rules? Parents these days don't want to be blamed so the pass the buck on whomever they can blame.

November 7, 2007 8:08 PM

Michelle Gilliland said:

Sam McGowen(Superintendent of Mascoutah Schools) never seems to side with the parents or children of the district. Last November Sam McGowen refused to put a bus driver on administrative leave or change the drivers' route while he was being investigated for inappropriate contact with 2 preschool children on his bus route. The parents had to take their children out of the preschool program because they had no other way to get them to school. Why couldn't he have just ruled on the side of error? Why is he so hard-headed? Why is he a Superintendent? Wake up Maschoutah parents!! Get him out of there. His way of thinking is narrow and dangerous.

November 7, 2007 11:02 PM

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