Zero Tolerance = Zero Common Sense

Zero tolerance began as a Congressional response to drugs and guns in school (the Drug-Free Schools and Campuses Act of 1989; the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994). Conceptually, its intent was the strict imposition of penalties regardless of the individual circumstances of each case. Like most things congress gets involved in, it was ill-conceived and poorly implemented. Naturally, this has led to a host of unintended consequences.

Those federal laws were the catalyst for school zero tolerance policies that soon went beyond drugs and weapons to include hate speech, harassment, fighting, and dress codes. School principals, who must administer zero tolerance policies, began to suspend and expel students for seemingly trivial offenses. Students have been suspended or expelled for a host of relatively minor incidents, including possession of nail files, organic cough drops, a model rocket, a five-inch plastic ax as part of a Halloween costume, an inhaler for asthma, and a kitchen knife in a lunch box to cut chicken.

Other examples include:

• A seventeen-year-old junior shot a paper clip with a rubber band at a classmate, missed, and broke the skin of a cafeteria worker. The student was expelled from school.

• A nine-year-old on the way to school found a manicure kit with a 1-inch knife. The student was suspended for one day.

• In Ponchatoula Louisiana, a 12-year-old who had been diagnosed with a hyperactive disorder warned the kids in the lunch line not to eat all the potatoes, or "I'm going to get you." The student, turned in by the lunch monitor, was suspended for two days. He was then referred to police by the principal, and the police charged the boy with making "terroristic threats." He was incarcerated for two weeks while awaiting trial.

• Two 10-year-old boys from Arlington, Virginia were suspended for three days for putting soapy water in a teacher's drink. At the teacher's urging, police charged the boys with a felony that carried a maximum sentence of 20 years. The children were formally processed through the juvenile justice system before the case was dismissed months later.

• In Denton County, Texas, a 13-year-old was asked to write a "scary" Halloween story for a class assignment. When the child wrote a story that talked about shooting up a school, he both received a passing grade by his teacher and was referred to the school principal's office. The school officials called the police, and the child spent six days in jail before the courts confirmed that no crime had been committed.

• In Palm Beach, Florida, a 14-year-old disabled student was referred to the principal's office for allegedly stealing $2 from another student. The principal referred the child to the police, where he was charged with strong-armed robbery, and held for six weeks in an adult jail for this, his first arrest. When the local media criticized the prosecutor's decision to file adult felony charges, he responded, "depicting this forcible felony, this strong-arm robbery, in terms as though it were no more than a $2 shoplifting fosters and promotes violence in our schools." Charges were dropped by the prosecution when a 60 Minutes II crew showed up at the boy's hearing.

• A sixth-grader at Des Moines’ Brody Middle School was issued a one-day suspension for bringing empty shotgun shells to school. Jazmine Martin, 12, collected the empty shells, which were blanks, at a Wild West show she attended with her family in South Dakota. She then took them to school to show to her science teacher and classmates, an act the school claims was in violation of its weapons policy.

"They called me to the office and when I was walking through the hallway I am like 'what did I do?'" said Jazmine Martin.

[Brody Middle School Principal Randy] Gordon said that even though they were empty, the shell casings are considered ammo, which violates the school's weapon policy.

"I called the principal and asked about this and he said it was something that posed a risk," said [Jazmine’s mother] Chenoa Martin. "I thought it was the most absurd thing I'd heard because it's empty and it says 'blank' right on the shell itself."

(Sources for the above may be found here, here, and here.)

The latest example of zero tolerance = zero common sense is the case of David Morales, an 8-year-old second grader in the Tiogue School in Coventry, Rhode Island. David's class was assigned to make creative hats for an occasion when they would meet their pen-pals from another school. David and his mother Christan Morales decided to add patriotic decorations to a camouflage hat, so they attached a small American flag and several toy soldiers to the hat. So far, so good, right?















David Morales and his hat.

(Picture and following story from here.)

But the school banned the hat because it ran afoul of the district's zero-tolerance weapons policy. Why? The toy soldiers were carrying tiny guns.

"His teacher called and said it wasn't appropriate," Morales said.

Earlier this week, after the hat was banned, the principal at the Tiogue School in Coventry told the family that the hat would be fine if David replaced the Army men holding weapons with ones that didn't have any, according to Superintendent Kenneth R. Di Pietro.

But, Morales said, the family had only one Army figure without a weapon (he was carrying binoculars), so David wore a plain baseball cap on the day of the pen pal meeting.

"Nothing was being done to limit patriotism, creativity, other than find an alternative to a weapon," Di Pietro said.

The district does not allow images of weapons or drugs on clothing. For example, a student would not be permitted to wear a shirt with a picture of a marijuana leaf on it, the superintendent said.

GMAFB! First of all, weapons are a fact of life and a staple of history. Does the school district go through all the history and library books and tear out pictures of minutemen with their muskets, cowboys and Indians with six-shooters and bow-and-arrows, WWII soldiers with rifles, machine guns, and tanks? What about law enforcement officials who carry weapons as part of their uniforms? Sticking the students' collective heads in the sand and pretending such things don't exist is not the way to prepare them for reality. Let's educate and inform them about the historical role, capabilities, and consequences of weapons usage, as opposed to a 'close your eyes and they'll just go away' approach.

Second, what lesson are the kids taking away from this episode? That blind obedience to rules is the correct course? '"Just following orders" is a justifiable defense? God forbid anyone should think for themselves, or exercise any degree of judgment.

And last but certainly not least is the young man's motivation. Why did he decorate his hat with toy soldiers?

Morales said her son was inspired to honor the military after striking up a friendship last summer with a neighbor in the Army.

Banning the hat "sent the wrong message to the kids, because it wasn't in any way to cause any harm to anyone," she said. "You're talking about Army men. This wasn't about guns."

And for all those people who respond to things like this by saying "The rules are the rules. People have to learn how to follow them" I have the following question:

Why don't we apply zero tolerance to illegal aliens?

As the old saying goes, there is nothing so uncommon as common sense...