A 17-year-old student at California's Life Learning Academy has been suspended for writing in a personal notebook that she understands the elementary school massacre Newtown, Conn.
"I understand the killings in Connecticut," Courtni Webb wrote in a personal notebook, The Daily Mail reported Monday. "I know why he pulled the trigger. Why are we oppressed by a dysfunctional community of haters and blamers?"
Adam Lanza killed 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, after killing his mother in the home they shared. He later killed himself.
A teacher found the poem in Webb's notebook and handed it over to the school principal, prompting the school to suspend Webb until further notice, according to Examiner.com.
But Webb and her mother told NBC News that Webb was merely expressing herself and trying to start a conversation about the issue. The school is overreacting, they argue.
"I feel like I really been made to almost look like a monster by my school and I don't appreciate that at all," Webb said. "Never in my life have I heard that you couldn't mention a tragedy that happened. I didn't say that I agree with it, I said I simply understand it."
The school hasn't yet commented on the issue but said in a letter to Webb's mother that the poem violated the school's zero-tolerance policy.
"I feel like they violated her freedom of speech," Webb's mother Valerie Statham told NBC.
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