This actually brings up a question in my mind: to what extent are zero tolerance policies and the TSA and other such ideas the result of public demand, and to what extent are they the result of what politicians and officials think public demand is?
I’d say they’re a pretty accurate idea among politicians and officials of how what (much of) the public demands can be distilled into a short, simple phrase and policy…short and simple enough to fit into a 30-second television ad.
Neither the public nor the officials would find this simplification adequate if they had an opportunity to give it more time.
The problem is that what individual people demand changes depending on where they are in the situation. I’ve known an awful lot of people who were all for “zero tolerance” until their kid was suspended for having Advil in their bag, until they had to throw out their nail scissors before boarding a flight, until their work friend was suspended for a conversation that offended someone. Here’s the problem - in my experience ( and I’m not referring to anyone posting here ) people think discretion should only be used in their situation and zero tolerance is fine in other situations. A parent thinks the school should be able to distinguish between Advil or an asthma inhaler or cocaine- but agrees with zero tolerance for weapons ,either not realizing or not caring that this would include a plastic knife.
People too often don’t consider the longer term implications of their positions and IMO it has little to do with a lack of time to consider them. For example, park closing times are sometimes an issue in my area. In one case I know of, neighborhood residents worked for months to get the police to enforce them by ticketing anyone in the park after closing. The police started enforcing it and ticketed everyone they found in the park after closing- including the middle-aged people who were quoted in the newspaper as being in favor of zero tolerance, but only regarding teenagers.
You DO know what this thread is about, don’t you?
Would a zero-tolerance policy on swearing let “bulls–t” slide?
Honestly, it was a cut-and-paste. I didn’t even notice that until you pointed it out.
So, bullshit! Bullshit, says I!
The irony here is that, if the school administrators had in fact blindly followed the policy without adding their own interpretation to it, the kid would have been in the clear, because she never actually handled a weapon. Her friend who was cutting himself handled a weapon, and would be subject to the zero-tolerance policy (though such a policy is almost certainly unwise in this case), but she did not. A razor blade is not made as a weapon, and she had no intent to use it as a weapon, so it was not a weapon, no more than a sharpened pencil or a heavy book is a weapon. But some administrator stepped beyond the policy, and made the conscious, unnecessary, and stupid decision to treat the razor blade as though it were a weapon anyway, and that is truly deserving of a pitting.
Chronos, I wonder if the school bans cutting blades for preparing artworks and such, or if students would only be banned from bringing their own and must only use those issued by the school itself. I can see however how it could (a) have been already defined that loose razor blades are weapons or (b) be argued that the blade, once “weaponized” by the first user’s intent, remains so.
Also, there seems to be something of a “definition creep” in it: it would be one thing to say that ZT means the authorities will never look the other way, that even minor infractions will be looked into for the record, and that “who” someone is will not make a difference in the corrective action taken. It’s an entirely other thing IMO to say that it’s inherent to it that even minor infractions must automatically carry draconian sanctions up front, punish first, ask questions later if public outcry is loud enough.
As **doreen **states, nobody who voted for a school board who promised ZT thought it meant not carrying Advil in your bag or not posing next to the cannon in front of the VFW Hall in a yearbook picture. They thought it “obviously” meant crack pipes, dime bags, switchblades and such.
From his point of view, he believes he would rather be subverting from within.
I know, right? I can’t count the many sharp, “weapons” I handled in various classes, exacto knives, clay knives, scissors, seam rippers, etc. I shudder how they’d deal with shop classes!
You have a very good son – he definitely earned his “punishment”. 
What in the world does honor have to do with it? If he steps down, then someone else takes his place who will enforce the law he doesn’t want enforced. He has to stay in the position to keep it from being enforced as long as he can.
If honor leads to the exact same unethical outcome that he’s trying to prevent, why in the world would he listen to honor?
I’m not saying I would have the guts to do something like this, but I’ve never understood this logic that stepping down is the right thing to do.
I’m assumed the issue was his moral objection to enforcing the law. By resigning, he would no longer be in a position where he would have that responsibility.
If the issue is an inability to exist in the same world as a zero tolerance policy, then suicide would seem to be the only solution because those laws exist now. But that’s a pretty extreme step. Before taking it, I’d advise somebody to maybe dial down their moral sensitivity a notch.
As for refusing to enforce the law, I hope most people can see the much greater problem of public officials deciding the law doesn’t apply to them and taking upon themselves the power to do what they think is right even if it’s technically illegal.
Didn’t I read here several months ago about a school which called a hazard material agency for help when a kid brought an unbroken mercury thermometer to school?
I don’t think IQ, or even common-sense levels are declining. What’s happening?
Is there really no room for them to exercise their own judgment? I find that hard to believe. They could have reported it as a case where suspension was not necessary and then, when called on it, explained their reasons.
I once worked at a school where lateness was subject to a zero- tolerance policy, and I had a student who was frequently a couple of minutes late due to very good reasons (his mother was sick and he had to take his little sister to school; I looked into other options for him, but there really weren’t any, and his lateness was minimal). This meant he automatically got an hour’s detention after school despite being an otherwise model student.
The register was submitted electronically and I genuinely couldn’t not mark him down as late, but I could collect him from the automatic detention and say he was serving it with me, then let him leave to collect his sister. The other teachers did the same after I left.
There were ways around even an automatic, computer-generated punishment. It just required a little effort on my behalf.
Since the school has now backed down, the option to do so must have been there all along.
My objection is to being such a fucking coward that you’d rather make no choice at all than do your fucking job and do what is best for the children under your stewardship.
Sure I can.
In my school district, the principal of a middle school make a judgement call. A kid was caught with an airsoft pistol, so he confiscated the toy. His reward for exercising judgement, and not treating an airsoft pistol like a real gun, was to be let go by the district.
I guarantee, the next time anything resembling a gun is found in the school, there will be a lockdown with a fucking SWAT team being called in.
When it comes to weapons (or drugs) I think that districts are not interested in anybody making judgement calls, especially not judgements that “underreact” to a weapon in school. Overreactions are totally fine, though.
I don’t think the two cases are comparable.
I can see why nobody wants to be the teacher or administrator who shrugged off a kid with a water pistol and then later saw that same kid bring an Uzi.
But is that a reasonable concern? Do kids really being water guns to school, get away with it, and then bring real guns?
And if a kid did bring an Uzi to school, would anyone be crazy enough to actually argue that it was because he got away with bringing a water gun to school earlier?
(I think the answer to No. 1 is no, but the real-world incidents described in this thread unfortunately lead me to say that the answer to No. 2 is yes).
Only the very craziest of the crazy, or as some call them, “litigators.”
Sure, but they only matter when judges, juries and lawmakers let them matter. If such litigation has a chance of winning, it’s a bigger problem.