I hope Marnie Holz doesn’t make it to her prom this year. And I hope Naomi Valas won’t take another case like this ever again.
You see, Holz was one of the dozens of senior girls who participated in that brutal hazing incident on May 4 outside of Chicago as part of an annual rite of passage, where senior girls initiate junior girls.
Now, after Glenbrook North High School Principal Michael Riggle expelled her, along with 30 other students who participated in the incident, Holz is claiming she was denied due process.
Since this is a column in a professionally run newspaper, I can’t use words that rhyme with itch or moon to fully express how I feel about young Marnie.
I’m also not a lawyer, so I won’t argue the legality of the case.
But, I do recall being a high school senior, doing high school senior things and getting punished and not thinking my rights were violated.
Valas, Holz’s attorney, released a statement claiming, “You are entitled to an education, so when someone takes that right away from you without giving you due process, they have violated your due process rights.”
Oh, thanks Naomi. So I guess when Marnie was shoving rat guts, feces and mud down the throats of junior girls in the woods, she asked them if she could do it first, so as not to violate their due process.
Is it me, or does it smell a little bit like horse-crap around here?
And I guess the Holzs’ idea of good parenting is running to a lawyer to get their kid off on a technicality so their ‘little angel’ can grind on the dance floor in a prom dress with her boyfriend.
Shockingly, the school’s investigation found the students violated laws of hazing and assault, both in the state of Illinois and at the school.
I’m no Alan Dershowitz, but if school laws are broken, isn’t the school allowed to punish those who broke them?
But back to Marnie. The actions of Marnie and her group of Girl Scouts left five girls hospitalized and an entire community humiliated for the whole world to see.
Ten days of suspension and missing the prom should be the least of Marnie’s concerns. She was recently accepted to the University of Wisconsin and one day she’ll be looking for a job and probably having kids-and what are those people going to think when they see little Marnie on that videotape, brutalizing human beings?
I wish I could sit in on that family slide show: “Oh, look sweetie! This is the part where Mommy made some of her peers eat excrement and put them in the hospital!”
Why am I so angry, you might ask? Because for years, I was that kid who sat by himself in the cafeteria, was picked last in gym class and was stuffed in lockers.
Funny how those victims grow up to have a voice, isn’t it, little Marnie?