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Update on this. Here is a reply sent from the principle via email today of me asking again and pointing out the fact that the property always has parents and kids seen playing on the school equipment during after school hours and during school break and if they were required to have insurance.
"Thank you for emailing me asking permission to dig metal on our school grounds. I must abide by the school policy (which is the law) and give you permission only if you provide the insurance policy. I wanted to have my baby shower here at the school and if I had proceeded then I too would have had to pay the $1,000,000 insurance policy which is around $200 at both insurance places I called. I found another location for my venue. We do not allow birthday parties, showers, use of facilities, etc. except to those who pay the insurance policy. The little league has their own insurance policy. As for people who use the track or playground, that is off limits but if they trespass then they are responsible for their own injuries. I am attaching the "Use of Facilities" and "Rental" Policies for the Pike County School System. I have spoken with assistant superintendent regarding this issue. You are welcome to call him as well."
They actually sent me school rental contract policy forms.
guitar-guy, read through what you yourself are writing in s-l-o-w motion. You say yourself:
".
... pointing out the fact that the property always has parents and kids seen playing on the school equipment during after school hours and during school break ..."
From that I infer that other people in the neighborhood can be seen, when the school is not in use, doing innocuous things like using the monkey bars, flying a kite, jogging the track, etc... (unless the perimeter is fenced like Ft. Knox??) You point that out to her, right? And ask if THOSE users are getting that insurance she speaks of. And your implied point, of course, is that obvsiously they are NOT getting that "insurance" and are just people who ....
just go. And you think that by pointing that out to her, that she's going to see the folly of her stance, and also "allow" YOU to "just go" as well.
And also I notice something very telling in her answer to you: she refers to your hobby NOT as "metal detecting", but rather, as "dig metal". Where the h*ck did the word "dig" enter into that conversation? Is that how you characterized your hobby and request? As in
"Hi, can I please go dig on your school grounds please?" No, of course not. You probably just asked to "metal detect". The "dig" part is probably just her own mental image of what you're going to do. But she can't sit there as split hairs all day about who gets booted (and given the "insurance" song & dance) because she thinks they're doing something "weird". Verses who DOESN'T get booted (those other people we all know simply "go" and no one cares or boots them). Can you blame her?
And you say yourself that probably the only reason you ever got the boot that first day, was that little league parent probably had a bee-in-their-bonnett when they saw you during a game there. But put yourself in that admin. lady's shoes: If she says "sure, go ahead", then she's "responsible" for you now. SO TOO would she have to tell those track joggers and kids on the monkey bars the SAME line about insurance, if THEY were to ask. So your answer as to why those other people job the track and use the monkey bars, without insurance, is:
THEY DIDN'T ASK (hint hint). If they had asked, then
they too could start forums and make posts lamenting their loss of freedoms, of how unfair it is, etc...
Now, I'm not saying that you should ever defy an order or a scram. Sure, give lip service and leave at that time. But I would have just returned when she, and any such little league things weren't there. You have to remember that you're in an odd-ball hobby that draws curious stares, and has admitted connotations. So sometimes you have to be a little more "discreet" than someone like a monkey-bar user. Sometimes you have to pick "lower traffic" times than the track jogger.
But if it were me, I would just take that as a "come back later when all such busy-bodies are truly gone". In other words,
do what 1320 is telling you: You're just a trespasser who's responsible for his own injury. But for pete's sake, use a little discretion on your timing. Because now that you've gone and made a big spectacle of yourself (thinking you needed to "win her over" and "get her permission" with all your letter-writing), you've now got a new problem to deal with: She's now going to remember you. In other words, perhaps she'd never have given the matter thought after the initial encounter, and just forgotten it. But now that you've put this "pressing issue" front and center for her to compose detailed legal responses to, well guess what's going to happen the next time she sees you or another md'r out there? She's going to subconsciously think: "Aha! There's one of THEM" and start booting others. So I think you just dug your hole deeper by making yourself a big red X. Should have just walked off, given it a few month break, and just returned at a more opportune time when no games or school admin. were going on.
