By now you have all heard the stories about children being suspended for some of the most ludicrous reasons. Reasons ranging from having blue hair or wallet chains to having a plastic butter knife to spread jelly on their toast. Zero tolerance policies were originally intended to protect students from other students. However, case after case proves them to only protect students from the freedom to express individuality and most of all an education. Today I’ll outline some of the key issues dealt with under zero tolerance policies and some options students have when faced with punishment under them. Students that are unfairly suspended or expelled under zero tolerance policies have two choices either take the undeserved punishment and a black mark on their permanent record, or they can contest it in court and find their personal lives exposed in a media frenzy. Either way it can be traumatizing for a young elementry school kid who has no idea what he or she did wrong. What did they do wrong? Usually nothing. Nothing deserved of a harsh punishment like suspension or expulsion, anyway.
One of the main problems that zero tolerance policies deal with is that of weapons. Now I can see like a 16” machete or a hand grenade or a ninja sword or a machine gun or something of that “caliber,” but wallet chains and of all things a plastic butter knife. Yeah that’s right I said a plastic butter knife. In California a little 9 year old girl was suspended for bringing a plastic butter knife to school to spread jelly on her toast so she wouldn’t have to get her fingers all sticky. (Now who hasn’t been there, right?) (Hoosier Review, May 6, 2002, “Little Girl Likes her Brain” by: Brian Balta) But seriously, how can you kill anyone let alone even hurt them slightly with a plastic butter knife?? Once when I was about ten my friends and I tried to dissect a humongous wood tick that we found using a plastic butter knife. It took nearly ten minutes to cut it completely in half. Now, if it took that long to simply saw a little tiny wood tick in half, who has about .00001% of the amount of protective matter on its body as we do, then by all logic, to even draw blood from a human being using a plastic butter knife it would probably take about five straight hours of sawing away.
Another part of the zero tolerance policy is that concerning drugs. I used to take Guanfacine and Adderol for my Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In the sixth grade I was almost suspended for having my pill bottle in my backpack. I didn’t like going to the office to take the pills because when you go to the office every day just before lunch everyone knows why you go. They all know there is something wrong with you and they make fun of you for “not being normal”. But I got off lucky. I was deemed responsible enough to take my medication on my own. Others have not been nearly so lucky.
A sophomore honor student who found a baggie of over-the-counter pills was suspended and recommended for expulsion. She didn’t turn them in right away because she was afraid they would claim the drugs were hers. “I know I didn’t handle the situation the way I should have, but I was so scared,” she said. “I thought about giving it to a teacher, but then I thought: what would stop them from saying they were mine?”
The irony in this report (taken from a September article in the Seattle Times (Seattle, WA) entitled: “Zero-Tolerance School Policies Come under Fire: Critics Say They Rob Kids of Education”) is that this is the same school that was unable to fire a teacher for showing up to class twenty minutes late and high on cocaine.
Also, the sexual harassment laws in this country have been spiraling out of control. These days, if you even tell girl you like her sweater you have a lawsuit on your hands. On November 21, in Salt Lake City, Utah, home of the oh-so-conservative Mormons a young boy was suspended for two days for asking another student if she had ever kissed a boy. The school district told the boy’s father that his son came too close to violating the sexual harassment policy. So the boy didn’t get suspended for violating the sexual harassment policy, he got suspended for almost violating it. What wonderful logic that is. (Reason, August, 2002, “The Right to Boyhood” by: Lynch, Michael W.)
Our school has a sexual harassment policy where the first offense is a warning, and the second offense you either get suspended or expelled depending on the severity of the offense. Apparently my friend Mark hugged a girl and I guess she was uncomfortable with it. So she went and told her mom and her mom told the principal and he got slapped with a bogus sexual harassment charge. I feel that this was incredibly unfair to Mark. What she should have done was told him she was uncomfortable about hugging. Had she told me I wouldn’t have hugged her. Otherwise, how the heck was he supposed to know? In the words of my mother, “I’m not a mind reader!!” I think that they should not be able to charge you without first telling you to please not do that. Otherwise, as I said, how can anyone know? Had the school had a zero tolerance policy he would have been expelled immediately, and probably wouldn’t be here right now.
As you can see zero tolerance policies are unnecessary and unwanted by the majority of people. They are only there in my opinion to make lazy schools look like they are doing their job and keep their liability to a minimum. And that is why I believe that the zero tolerance policies should be abolished; because in all actuality they hurt more students than they actually help.