Student Expelled ... for Advil Posession?

The BBQ Pit
41

Dude, Galena, did we go to the same high school? :wink:

We, too, had almost everything banned. Getting a prescription filed with the office was such a pain that, when my sister and I got the usual strep throat and the like, we took one pill in the morning, one at dinner, and one before bed instead of filing it in the office for us to take during lunch.

We also had the IDs around our necks. Boy, the stories I could tell about those.

They started out with metal breakaway chains going through two holes in the ID. They had our Name, ID number, and barcode on them, and were used as a library card. You were required to wear them at all times, (I laughed whenever a teacher said, “Angel, put your ID on,” for obvious reasons), but usually, if you pulled it out and showed it to a teacher, they were cool about it.

Then they tied the IDs to the lunch system. No hot lunch without an ID. Then, they tied them to the snack bar, so no food at all without an ID or a temporary ID. They decided it would be too easy to choke someone with the chain/holes setup (even though it NEVER HAPPENED), so they changed to a red plastic and thread chain that was now threaded through one hole. The ID never hung facing forward–I might as well had a blank, laminated piece of paper on my neck. The chains were cheaply made, and lasted about 17 nanoseconds before they broke and you had to buy another one for a dollar.

The teachers, fortunately, had more sense for the most part. One of them GAVE me Tylenol a few times (I get really bad headaches sometimes). Had one of the random backpack inspections ever gone further than looking at my packed and messy backpack and going…“er, it’s fine,” I probably would’ve been suspended a few times for having Tylenol/Advil/Contac/Sucrets in my bag.

And sorry about the water bottles. My friend Mike and his friend Jimmy put vodka in one, once. It’s their fault they’re banned :D.

42

With any luck, Advil will sponsor her a scholarship at a better fee-paying school, and she can raise two fingers at the fuckwits who expelled her for a year for headache pills.

Zero tolerance policies my fucking arse. It just means young girls in agonies of menstrual cramps too embarrassed to ask a male teacher to be excused from class to see the nurse, it means parents like the above poster going through hoops for their child to get medicated, it’s just stupid, stupid, stupid.

I await the day carrying lipbalm is made a Federal offence. After all, it could be used as lube behind the bike sheds…

43

All the pipes? I thought that lead water pipes went out of style with the Romans. Where does the cafeteria get their water from?

FTR, my high school, back in the mid '80s didn’t do too much of anything. They did once crack down on students who were smoking too close to one of the entrances. I used to see (and smell) people smoking pot out of the doors. I know that pot, hash and mushrooms were readily available and trading hands in the school. The only suspension that I can remember is for somebody who came back from lunch really drunk.

44

Maybe it’s not lead. There’s some bad stuff in the pipes that leeches out into the water that they’re not supposed to drink.
All the drinking fountains are shut off and wrapped in plastic, and the sinks in the bathrooms have signs over them saying not to drink the water.
Lead solder in the joints, maybe?

45

Sorry your mutual friends found it funny. Tylonol is extremely toxic, much easier to OD on than most of the things people try. This is extremely well-documented.

46

Actually, this is a sound policy. As others have pointed out, Tylenol, etc., can be very dangerous and even lethal. Before giving her anything, she should ensure that you hadn’t already given her something that morning. (Or put it in her backpack with instructions to her to take it at x time, like some parents do.)

If she gives her Tylenol, it is imperative that she communicate this to you so you know when YOU can re-dose. I’d say writing it down is a far better means of communication than telling a child to tell mommy that she was given 2 teaspoons of Junior Stength Tylenol at 2pm and hope the kid remembers it right.

47

That’s the way it’s SUPPOSED to work. Nothing beats a stomach pump AND peer-group pressure to teach a lesson.

48

My cousin almost OD-ed on vitamens, using the same logic.

Of course, he was all of six years old at the time, so it’s more understandable.

My 11th grade history teacher used to make fun of our school nurse who became suspicious if anyone asked for advil. I get migraines, and I’d ask for two, and she’d give me this look like I was a crackhead.

She was really old too-she had worked for Jonas Salk when he was administering his polio vaccine.

49

This is insane. It goes far beyond the bounds of reason. Fortunately, my school is VERY relaxed about pretty much everything. Including OTC painkillers.

FWIW, I overdosed slightly on acetaminophen a couple of years ago. Given the incredible agonizing pain that I was in (kidney infection), this is somewhat defensible. It just made me puke on the way to the hospital. That was on probably 6 pills in a 2 hour period. Yeah, the stuff can be dangerous. But this is way overkill, especially because this is Advil, which isn’t nearly so poisonous.

50

Yea. Consensus was, if he was going to overdose, he should’ve at least done it on something good.

51

I can see this making sense for an elementary school… but high school? What a joke. Teenagers are capable of reading the bottle and knowing when they last took a pill.

52

It’s an absolutely horrible way to die too. Liver failure is not the way anyone should have to go.

53

Did I miss something? The report I saw showed Bossier Parish, which is in Louisiana.

54

Zero-tolerance policies are one of the subjects that make me want to stab people (mostly the adminstrators who insist on how effective they are.)

My high school didn’t have a school nurse. Teachers weren’t allowed to give us medicine. The office didn’t keep anything on hand and there were no vending machines. Supposedly, we were to hand our Advil bottles to the evil secretary in the office and come running to her if we needed them - assuming she could find it in her busy schedule to dispense them (the woman once refused me a call home to let my mom know I needed to be picked up early due to a meeting cancellation. She said she’d make the call when she wasn’t busy, but didn’t. I ended up waiting on the front steps of the school for 90 minutes and she thought it was FUNNY). Needless to say, I found other ways of sneaking my contraband in. Look, another honor student drug dealer!

Having to be a female dealing with typical problems is often bad enough without having to worry about being punished for trying to deal with it.

55

Uh, cite?

And do you really think that a high school student is going to be stupid enough to take a pain killer that’s going to kill them? I don’t know, maybe I’m just special, but if a certain brand of pain killer is going to kill me, I’m pretty sure I’d know about that and know not to take it.

56

In my high school we had one famous case of a girl getting detention for tylenol and a guy (in one my spanish class) having pot and not getting in trouble because he ratted out other people who he had sold it to. Talk about priorities out of whack.

Of course, I went to the nurse with a headache and wasn’t allowed any drugs because my parents hadn’t authorized it (I was 17!). She told me to lie down a while and then proceeded to type notices on her old manual typewriter. Great for a headache, that.

57

At the risk of alienating everyone…I can see why the school administrator did it. I can also see why the administrative committee did what it did. After all, as a society we cannot teach children the value of Socialism if we do not apply rules in a uniform fashion. Allowing local administrators discretion with regard to rules disrupts centrallized planning. Ejecting one person from the school is a small price to pay if the overall result simplifies control from the top. Cheers!

58

What the fuck does socialism have to do with anything? Zero tolerance is usually done under the cover of the War On Drugs.

59

My sister goes to a school like this. They are required to get a prescription from a doctor to take any kind of. . .anything. For example, when my sister has a cold-- this is 17 year old that the state of NJ trusts to operate a motor vehicle-- she must provide a prescription from her doctor in order for the nurse to dispense cough drops and fluids (water, OJ, etc) to her. She needs a doctors note to drink! She needs monthly painkillers due to her period-- also requiring a doctors note. The school will not let the doctor write a standing note (cough drops at will, advil every 28 days, etc). She must bring in a new note every month.

Frustrated with this insanity, her doctor just wrote a stack of notes for the advil. Mom calls whenever she needs the Orange Juice note. I don’t know if any other docs around here will pop up, but I know this drives our family doctor crazy. And not to mention what it does to overall healthcare costs (because like at many schools, my mother can’t keep my sister home from school without a doctors note, but she can’t send her to school to tough it out without a doctors note, either). My sister has to visit the doctor more often than the whole rest of the family put together because of this.

A friend of hers must bring a monthly prescription slip in so that she can go down to the nurse and use re-wetting drops for her contacts. I’m not making that up.