The news that a school district doesn't want to use Halo 2 for a fundraiser is probably going to provoke two kinds of reactions: rabid gamers will again repeat their mantra that there is no definitive proof anywhere that violent games encourage violent behavior (despite the axiom that absence of proof isn't proof of absence) and those who consider themselves upstanding, god-fearing, won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-children "family values" types will applaud the move and pay lip service to more liberal values by pointing out that just because other parents are morally loose enough to allow their tykes to play with violent games like halo 2 doesn't mean that they have to allow this scourge into their public schools.

And as happens in most such debates, both sides are partially right and partially wrong.

There's no reason why a school should be obligated to include an M-rated game in a school function that includes students who aren't of age to buy an M-rated game. The planners apparently did go so far as to get parental permission for participants, but that isn't really the issue. Just because students want something and parents agree doesn't obligate the school to do it.

However, that doesn't appear to be the district's logic; in fact, the real audience for their actions aren't the parents that approve of the event and did so in writing, it's the parents who wouldn't have approved, whose children wouldn't be at the event, but who would be ill-disposed to the school having the event at all, regardless of their non-involvement.

"Anything we do that even looks like we're endorsing violence is not appropriate." That line says it all. It cuts through all of the arguments about whether or not violent games are good, bad, or indifferent, and says "it doesn't matter-- it makes us look bad allowing kids to play this."

The most disturbing part, though, is the obligatory knee jerk association with Columbine, as if allowing violent video games is somehow analogous in some vague way with the events that led to that tragedy.

How any school administrator with even a passing understanding of the events of Columbine can believe that the school's endorsement of a video game would have an effect on students somehow comparable is absolutely astounding. Students willing to attempt to slaughter en masse teachers, fellow students, and then themselves, probably aren't that affected by what school employees do or do not endorse. If anything, having the school endorse Halo 2 would probably have convinced the Columbine perpetrators that Microsoft is just another tool of mainstream consumer society, out to grind the geeks and the weirdos of the world into grist for the mills.

Of course, the effect on the students is not-- and it rarely is-- the point. The real audience is the parents. They are the ones who the school is afraid will think the use of Halo 2 is inappropriate; and all they've really achieved here is convincing students that teachers and parents alike give children much less credit for the ability to think critically and to distinguish fantasy from reality than they deserve, mostly because they've grown into adults with far too little of both the former and the latter.