At the Camden-Rockport Middle School, a group of eighth-grade boys have apparently made a game of seeing who can expel the loudest and grossest farts. Because of this, as the eighth grade's informal newspaper The Fire Cracker has reported, a natural human function has for the first time been outlawed and penalized.

Not so, says principal Maria Libby. She insists that there is no new rule about farting as such, but rather an increased enforcement of an already existing rule about disruptive behavior. "It's not a new policy, but farting can be considered a disruption."

(Note: as a teacher, I can testify to the hilarity and disruptive effect of a fart in class. The lady has a point.)

A group of seventh-graders, interviewed after school last Friday, said the eighth-graders' behavior is well known. One was quoted as saying, "They would do it in science class and in other places. It's a natural occurrence, and we all do it sixteen times a day." The student couldn't remember where he obtained that information.

Perhaps it's a tempest in a teapot (or a little gas in a confined space), but it still seems funny to me. I can well support the thesis that farting, intentional or not, can disrupt class; and if I thought the perpetrator was doing it deliberately, even I could think kindly about a sentence of detention.