GRUNDY COUNTY, Tenn. — 'Gus has got a gun!'
It wasn't true. But those five words now have a high school senior in hot water in Grundy County, Tennessee.
The family of James Morgan Sitz says other students goaded Sitz into saying those words while on school grounds, and says he was only joking.
But school officials determined it was no laughing matter.
Sitz was suspended from Grundy County High School for the rest of the year, and he won't be able to attend that school's prom or graduation ceremonies.
But that's not all. He also faces two criminal charges: disorderly conduct and incitement to riot.
Sitz's mother posted a petition on the website Change.org to change his status, saying it's a question of fairness.
As of this writing, the petition has a little over 600 signatures.
This comes, in the middle of an effort across school systems and the state legislature to take a growing number of threats more seriously to keep them from happening.
Lawmakers passed a new Tennessee law that increases the penalty for threatening a school, including the loss of driving privileges.
JC Bowman Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee says there has been an uptick in threat made by students, forcing Tennessee Lawmakers and school officials to chnage their course of action. Bowman said...
We have seen threats that kids have made in jest, and then a half hearted, that have come to fruition. And people didn't take them serious. So now we take every threat very serious law enforcement and at schools cannot afford to play around with this anymore.The teen is scheduled to appear in Grundy County Criminal Court on Thursday.
Since we learned of this story two weeks ago, we have tried to get a comment from Grundy County Schools officials about Sitz's case. So far, we haven't heard back.
She told us on Tuesday that she understands her son broke a big rule. But she says the level of punishment he's getting is excessive. She says
It’s very vague. They wrote on the paper that he violated a school rule, but then wrote out beside that 'rule level five.' The school rule they are saying that he broke was causing a disturbance in the school environment. Causing a disturbance in the school environment is listed under level three, level four and level five. If they had said it was level three he would’ve got three days of in school suspension. Level four he would’ve got three days out of school suspension. But because they deemed it a level five that put him in alternative school. So when you’re an alternative school, that’s how they take graduation.In a disciplinary referral form, Grundy County schools listed the offense as a "level 5." The student handbook describes a level 4 and level 5 offense as "any violation in which the administration may deem as reasonable to fall within this category."
"I feel sorry for the young man. I hate that this happened to him, but you got to take threats seriously," Bowman says. "You’re going to see, probably even more laws and restrictions come on the books until that number starts declining."And this is not the first time, Grundy County schools' protocol over guns and threats has caused controversy.
This follows a situation from 2022, where a man was accused of walking into a Grundy County school with a gun and threatening a student.
A police report says Kaleb Swearington admitted to the act. At the time, the victim's mother accused the school principal of ignoring the threat and not notifying parents.
At the time, the school's principal and vice principal Christy admitted to parents in a letter that school protocols were not followed.
Swearington was arrested more than 1 month after the original threat.
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