briefs

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich., (MCT) – A male student at Central Michigan University has admitted… MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich., (MCT) – A male student at Central Michigan University has admitted to hanging nooses in a University classroom, campus police said Saturday.

The student called police Saturday morning to confess to fashioning the hate symbols from flexible compressed-gas line used for laboratory work. The nooses were found Nov. 12.

“Whether it was meant as a prank or not, it was still the type of action that we find deplorable,” CMU spokesman Steve Smith said Saturday. “We will use this as an opportunity to continue discussions about diversity and inclusion of everybody in America.”

Campus Police Chief Stan Dinius said in a news release that his department is completing its investigation and forwarding information to the Isabella County Prosecutor’s Office.

In October, someone posted flyers containing slurs against American Indians. A few weeks later, somebody slipped flyers condemning Islam under several professors’ doors.

Administrators responded by scheduling a diversity forum for Nov. 27. -By Emilia Askari, Detroit Free Press

CHICAGO (MCT) – A bizarre and cruel Internet hoax that ended with the suicide of a 13-year-old girl has bitterly divided a western St. Louis suburb, provoked a firestorm in the blogosphere and raised troubling questions about how to police traffic on popular social networking sites like MySpace.com.

The death of Megan Meier in Dardenne Prairie, Mo., went beyond the growing phenomenon of cyber-bullying because the alleged instigators of the hoax were not only adults but parents of a classmate of Megan’s, who lived just down the street from her.

No charges have been filed. A local newspaper’s decision not to publish the names of the parents involved has fanned a furious public response.

The involvement of adults in the Meier case breaks new ground, Parry Aftab, an Internet attorney and executive director of Wiredsafety.org, a cyber-safety organization, said.

“When adults act like children there are criminal consequences,” Aftab said. “The Internet should not be used as a weapon.”

The Meier suicide occurred in October 2006, but it did not become widely known until last Sunday when the Suburban Journals, which cover the St. Louis suburbs, published a lengthy article detailing the hoax involving a fictitious 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans, who contacted Megan on MySpace.com.

Their communication lasted six weeks, according to the Journal article, and ended with a string of disturbing messages from Josh and postings that read Megan was “fat” and “a slut.”

The story reported Ron Meier, Megan’s father, saying the final posting on the MySpace account read, “The world would be a better place without you.”

Late on the afternoon of Oct. 16, 2006, Ron and Tina Meier discovered Megan had hanged herself in her closet. Megan, who died the following day, was a few weeks shy of her 14th birthday.

The Journal added to the controversy by declining to identify the parents involved in the hoax, out of concern for the couple’s daughter who had been a classmate and friend of Megan’s. -By Tim Jones, Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON (MCT) – A federal rule that will shorten prison time for new crack cocaine offenders went into effect Nov. 1.

Now the question is whether violators already behind bars will get a break, too.

It could mean earlier freedom for nearly 20,000 federal prisoners.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission heard the pros and cons at a hearing last week on whether its new guidelines for crack cocaine offenses should be retroactive.

“It is not often that courts are afforded the opportunity to ameliorate the wrongs of the past,” said U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton of the District of Columbia.

Walton told the hearing that the commission, of which he is a member, “has the ability to undo some of the injustices associated with crack sentencing over the last 20 years.”

A single gram of crack cocaine had triggered the same punishment as 100 grams of powder cocaine. Crack penalties had been as much as eight times longer than those for powder cocaine.

The change could lower the temperature on a racially charged debate. Convicted crack offenders tend to be black; convicted powder cocaine offenders tend to be white. The disparity in punishment evoked images of low-income blacks sitting in jail for crack longer than affluent whites caught with the same amount of cocaine, but in powder form.

Of the nearly 20,000 federal prisoners whose sentences could be reduced, 86 percent are black and 6 percent are white, according to the commission.

The new guidelines close the gap in sentencing somewhat and would mean an average sentence reduction of 27 months. Just over 3,800 drug offenders would be released in the first year, according to the commission.

But law enforcement is divided over the issue. The Bush Justice Department contends that the new sentencing guidelines will open the prison doors for scores of dangerous felons and jam the courts. -By David Goldstein, McClatchy Newspapers