How will reenacting play in Peoria?

(From the Peoria Journal Star - 30 January 2000)

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A group of seventh-graders tried, in vain, to persuade superintendent Gary Catalani to allow them to do their annual Civil War battle re-enactment using toy muskets. Catalani says toy muskets violate the zero tolerance policy on weapons in school. The students say a battle re-enactment without replicas is not much of a re-enactment.

But Catalani says that putting "guns" in the hands of youngsters, even fake ones, sends a bad message. According to the article, Catalani insisted the re-enactment would need to be done without guns. Now, it turns out, the re-enactment, by the students, is also banned. Why? Catalani says there must be, above all else, consistency.

Student Jasmine Elliott's said, "Sometimes adults make idiotic decisions. It's not like holding a fake gun will make us want to pick up a real gun and shoot our friends. And I think we'd learn how bad guns are if we got to re-enact the war just like it happened."