The Post and Courier - Charleston, S.C.
Author: GLENN SMITH
Date: Nov 18, 2005
Start Page: B.3
Section: LOCAL & STATE
Text Word Count: 302

Three suspended seventh-graders returned to Buist Academy on Thursday morning and offered apologies to their classmates for causing a stir with threatening comments made in a shared journal, school officials said.

Candice Bates-Quinn, the Charleston County School District's guidance supervisor, and Marsha Moreland, Buist's guidance director, were on hand as the trio and their parents discussed the episode with the girls' classmates in a frank meeting in the cafeteria.

"The girls, one by one, explained what they had done, how sorry they were and that they ... were foolish, were venting and didn't mean to hurt anybody," Moreland said.

The girls were suspended Nov. 4 after school officials reviewed a journal they were sharing in a French class. The journal contained one student's stated desire to kill a teacher and references to forcing a student with a dairy allergy to consume milk, authorities said.

School officials initially recommended that the girls be expelled, but that recommendation was withdrawn Wednesday after a pediatric psychiatrist concluded that the girls posed no threat. But at the same time the girls were cleared to return to school, Charleston police announced that all three had been charged with making threats.

District spokesman Jerry Adams said no problems were reported at the school Thursday.

Guy Vitetta, lawyer for one of the girls, said Buist Principal Sallie Ballard ordered each girl to perform 25 hours of community service.

Moreland said the girls also are on probation and school officials will keep an eye on their conduct. But she said the girls seemed genuinely remorseful, and their classmates were moved by the girls' parents' accounts of how the "harrowing" ordeal had affected their families, she said.

"I think the girls have learned from this, and certainly the other students have learned from this," she said.

Credit: The Post and Courier

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