Detroit's Mayor to Jail

The New York Times is running a story entitled, "Judge Orders Detroit Mayor Jailed." The article states, "Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick was sent to the county jail Thursday and will spend at least one night there as punishment for violating his bond." It continues, "The mayor’s jailing comes nearly seven months after text messages between Mr. Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, contradicting testimony that they gave during a whistleblower lawsuit against the city were published by The Detroit Free Press."

Read the Article!!

Discussion Starters for Younger Children

• Do you think that adults can misbehave? Why/why not? Do you think that adults can get in trouble if they misbehave? How would they get in trouble?
  
• Do you think that adults should behave better than children most of the time? Why/why not?
  
• Have you ever gone somewhere you should not have gone? Why did you go there? What happened when you were there? Why did you go there if you were not supposed to go there?
  
• Should the punishment for an adult be different than the punishment of a child if both the child and the adult do the same thing wrong? Why/Why not?
  

Discussion Starters for Older Students

• Vocabulary terms to discuss: Bond; Perjury; Scrutiny; and, Whistleblower.
  
• Imagine that you served as an advisor to Michigan Governor, Jennifer Grandholm, would you advise her to remove Mayor Kilpatrick from office? Why/why not? What questions would you want to answer before you advised anything? Why would you want these specific questions answered?
  
• Based upon the information presented in this article, develop a character sketch for Kwame Kilpatrick? If you could ask the Mayor three questions what questions would you ask him? How do you think he would answer?
  
• Do you think that this article is fair to Mayor Kilpatric? Why/why not? How would you go about verifying the information presented in this article if you wanted to do so?