Trench-Coat Clad Student’s Suspension Is Criticized

As the week wore on, Devin Furey found more and more of his classmates staring at him, trading whispers, acting weird. Hair out of place? Spinach in his teeth? Must be the black trench coat.

When the principal told him to get rid of it, Devin did, for a day. Then he put it back on, something he’s done for four years, regardless of the weather. Since that act of defiance, he’s been suspended from school, hauled down to the state police and accused of drafting a hit list and phoning in a bomb threat.

“This is, like, you know, a shock,” said the 16-year-old from the tiny Pocono Mountain town of Tannersville, Pa. “Last week I was in school, and now people think I’m going to kill them.”

Devin is just one teen in one town in one state shuddering in fear that killings will unfold there in exactly the same way they did at a high school in Colorado last week, right down to the style of clothing and the sound of music favored by the murderers. Although some experts say it’s important to embrace youngsters considered outcasts by their peers, many schools are instead staging preemptive strikes against suspected student psychos.

The targeted ones--youths with a fondness for black clothing and shock rockers such as Marilyn Manson--call it “geek profiling,” and it’s sweeping the country.

“My brother and my family are very scared now for their own well-being,” said Devin’s sister, Brook Furey, who works for the Internet news agency CNet in San Francisco. “Devin is not militant, violent, racist, psychotic or evil.”

Devin is, however, suspended for two weeks since Tuesday for “defiance, insubordination, violation of the dress code and defiance of the principal,” according to a letter from Pocono Mountain High School to his parents.

Pocono Mountain Schools Supt. David Krauser would not comment on Devin’s case but said the school has been bullish about suspending and turning in to police any kids who are suspected of making “terroristic” comments or otherwise evoking the trench coat-wearing killers in Colorado. He said trench coats have been banned and that a dozen to 20 kids have been suspended, expelled or turned over to police since the April 20 massacre.

“We have determined that anything that is out of the ordinary that would lead parents or students to be fearful, we would not tolerate.”

Devin’s mother, Connie Furey, said the school is overreacting to parental paranoia in general and, in particular, to wild rumors concocted by students who don’t like Devin and other kids who dress in black, dye their hair orange and listen to morbid music.

The youngster and his father were ordered to report to state police on Tuesday to explain what Devin says is a bogus report that another student had seen him with a “hit list” of names of fellow students.

“He didn’t even know some of the people supposedly on this list,” Furey said. The family has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which is inundated with such complaints.

“We’ve been getting calls all over the place,” said Larry Frankel, executive director of the Pennsylvania ACLU. “I’m sure these schools are overreacting. It does require that we take a deep breath and use some common sense.”

Since his suspension, a new rumor began flying around town that Devin planned to blow up the school Friday. Krauser confirmed there was a bomb sweep Thursday night, although no bomb was found. Devin says he made no such threat.

The family is upset because, they say, the school has notified some people purportedly on the hit list the other student insisted he saw.

“People have been calling me up saying: ‘Hey, how come I’m on your hit list?’ ” Devin said.

State police indicated that the Furey case is among at least 10 that they are investigating at the school since the Colorado massacre that left 15 dead.

“We’re aware of that incident, it’s being looked into, but no hit list has ever been found,” said state police Trooper Craig VanLouvender. “Everything that comes to us, we investigate. It’s been a lot of work.”

Furey doubts if her boy can ever return to the school in the town where he was born. “He’s afraid. He’s hurt. He’s embarrassed. How can he go back to that school when people think he wants to kill them?”