John C. Sherwood

RICHLAND – Gull Lake Community Schools officials barred a former student from school property and events this week after it was learned the student had posted a seemingly threatening song on YouTube.

“I would say it was preventive,” Kalamazoo County Undersheriff Paul G. Matyas said Wednesday. “We thought this was an appropriate course of action.”

Matyas said the sheriff’s department is continuing to investigate the matter as a potential criminal case, adding that sheriff’s officials plan to question the student.

“We intend to talk to him and we’ll make an assessment at that time,” Matyas said. “Free speech doesn’t absolve you from poor decision-making or breaking the law.”

In a letter to parents distributed Wednesday, Superintendent Christopher Rundle described the former student as having posted a disclaimer with the song, “expressly stating that ‘[t]his is just a song’ and that ‘[n]o harm [is] intended.’ Nevertheless, the District is taking this matter seriously.”

Matyas said detectives have determined that the song had been removed from the Internet.

A student informed school officials Tuesday about the song’s presence online, but the song had been available online for months, a Kalamazoo television station reported.

Later that day, school officials sent an automatic telephone call to district parents, in which Rundle described the song without revealing how it could be found on the Internet.

A student “wrote a song that contains lyrics that describe violence against the Gull Lake Community Schools,” Rundle told parents in the phone call, adding that “other than the lyrics of the song itself, we have no reason to suspect that the former student intends any actual harm against the Gull Lake Community Schools.” Those statements also appeared in the letter to parents.

School administrators sought investigation from the Richland Police Department as well as the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office. The district also requested increased police presence at upcoming school events, Rundle stated in the letter. Richland police today referred inquiries to the sheriff’s office.

The student’s name was not reported for reasons of privacy, but the pupil was described in a report on WWMT-TV Ch. 3 as a high school student who had dropped out of school last fall before entering junior year.

Call John C. Sherwood at 966-0698. Follow him on Twitter: @jcsherwood