Ping: Chubby

[mckerney]

Aren't you from Oswego, or at least lived there for sometime?

Long Island Student Charged In Class Prank

Nov 20, 2003 11:07 am US/Eastern
(1010 WINS) (OSWEGO, N.Y.) A 20-year-old college student from Long Island has been charged with disorderly conduct after he ran into a Native American Studies class wearing a toy headdress and shot a rubber-tipped arrow at the instructor, campus police said.

Michael D. Johnson launched the suction-cup arrow, shouted, "Go back to your own country," and ran out of the classroom at the State University College at Oswego shortly before noon Oct. 31, police and students said.

Johnson, who was arrested Tuesday on a tip, told police he didn't know that teacher Kevin White was an Akwesasne Mohawk.

"He said he wanted to do a Halloween prank consistent with a class," Lt. Michael Taylor told The Post-Standard of Syracuse. "Apparently, (he) first wanted to get a monkey suit and run through an anthropology class, but couldn't find one."

Johnson, an Oswego student from Calverton, Long Island, was charged with the violation instead of a more serious harassment count.

"This didn't appear to be a hate crime," Taylor said Wednesday. "I don't think he realized the reaction it would get."

Johnson could face a fine or up to 15 days in jail. Calls to his dormitory room went unanswered. He's due in Town Court Dec. 2 in Oswego, 35 miles north of Syracuse.

White said education was his main concern. "I hope he's learned a valuable lesson, and that ... he'll think about the larger implications of his actions."

However, several of his students were incensed by the stunt directed at their teacher, an academic planning counselor and Native American recruiter.

"At the level we're at, in college, this isn't something we should have to deal with," Ruth Gleason told the newspaper. She said it also disrupted the concentration of the 85 students taking a test.

White later offered them the option of writing a research paper in place of the test.