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<DIV>Secret Service questions student on drawings</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>PROSSER, Washington (AP) -- Secret Service agents questioned a high school
student about anti-war drawings he did for an art class, one of which depicted
President Bush's head on a stick.</DIV>
<DIV>
<P>Another pencil-and-ink drawing portrayed Bush as a devil launching a missile,
with a caption reading "End the war -- on terrorism."</P>
<P>The 15-year-old boy's art teacher at Prosser High School turned the drawings
over to school administrators, who notified police, who called the Secret
Service.</P>
<P>"We involve the police anytime we have a concern," Prosser Superintendent Ray
Tolcacher told the Tri-City Herald newspaper.</P>
<P>Secret Service agents interviewed the boy last Friday. The student, who was
not arrested, has not been identified.</P>
<P>The school district disciplined him, but district officials refused to say
what the punishment was. Tolcacher said the boy was not suspended.</P>
<P>The artwork was apparently part of an assignment to keep a notebook of
drawings, according to Kevin Cravens, a friend of the boy's family.</P>
<P>The drawing that drew the most notice showed a man in what appeared to be
Middle Eastern-style clothing, holding a rifle. He was also holding a stick with
an oversize head of the president on it.</P>
<P>The student said the head was enlarged because it was intended to be an
effigy, Cravens said. The caption called for an end to the war in Iraq.</P>
<P>A message left by The Associated Press with an after-hours duty officer with
the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., was not immediately returned on
Monday.</P>
<P>"If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the
president, then we are living in '1984'," Cravens said.</P>
<P>Tolcacher insisted it was not a freedom of speech issue, but a concern over
the depiction of violence.</P>
<P>"From what I saw, [school officials] were right to be concerned," Prosser
Police Chief Win Taylor said.</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>