Smith Middle School Hunger Games ?eld trip questioned

Many Chapel Hill residents have joined the national Hunger Games craze, but one parent wasn’t so enthusiastic.

A Smith Middle School father refused to sign a permission slip for his 8th grade daughter’s field trip to see the movie Thursday — and then he voiced his concerns.

Dino Lorenzini, a professor at the University of Georgia, sent an email to his daughter’s school and to Chapel Hill town mayor Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt Tuesday protesting the field trip.

He opposed Smith Middle School’s Hunger Games trip because of the movie’s violence.

The Hunger Games movie is based on the first book in a trilogy of novels written by Suzanne Collins.

The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic nation and tells the story of a young girl competing in a vicious annual national tournament.

“The Hunger Games” involve 24 randomly selected participants who are forced to battle to the death in an outdoor arena until only one person is left alive.

The 7th and 8th grade classes at Smith Middle School finished a unit on dystopian literature, and “The Hunger Games” was one of several books that students could read for the unit.

“I do not think that our school should condone the violence in this movie by organizing an official school trip to view it,” Lorenzini said in an email to the faculty at Smith. “I am all for the kids having fun, but this movie is not appropriate, and we as a school should have no part in it.”

In response to Lorenzini’s email, Smith Principal Phil Holmes sent an email explaining the field trip to Kleinschmidt and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education.

Holmes said students were required to have their parents sign a permission slip in order to attend the field trip.

The permission slip stated the title of the film and the PG-13 rating, said Holmes in the email.

Stephanie Knott, spokeswoman for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, said the school district has not received any complaints other than the email from Lorenzini.

She said his comment was the only one that was received by her office and the principal’s office.

“It is important to see the film in an academic context,” said Knott, who said she read the book and saw the movie. “The message is not about violence. It is about the heroine who is a vision of reason and compassion in a world gone wrong.”

Knott said both classes went to see the movie despite Lorenzini’s concerns about its violent content.

“I don’t think violence is the message that Suzanne Collins wants us to take away from the book,” she said.

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