The story as it was presented:
http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/local/dade/digdocs/034831.htm
Jeezus…
Ya know…sometimes things like this just want to make ya end it all.
(Loads six shooter…points at head.)
Man…this world is getting more messed up as the days go by…
Am I the only one that thinks that things like this make you feel like you are in an episode of the Twilight Zone?
Here is what I sent him a few days ago… Without surprise I have not received a reply yet.
People like this and policies like this make me ill.
-SS
Just another example of “Zero Tolerance” should really be called “Zero Intelligence.”
This is almost as stupid as the 4th grader who brought his GI Joes to school and was suspended for two weeks because the little plastic GI Joe action figure’s fake guns qualified under the “bringing guns to school” rules. 
-Ben
Yeah, that story’s pretty bone-headed… but, to me, nothing will be as bad as the kid who got suspended for having a paper gun…
::sigh::
Is it possible to secede from the human race?
Read this:
http://www.tampatrib.com/MGAV8J7C5NC.html
BTW – as a teacher, I would have cut the girl in Miami some slack. Everyone makes mistakes.
Would they invoke the same penalty on an OJT kid who left his casecutter in his car?
I went to a Rural high school, and it would happen that the guys would forget to take the guns out of the gun racks of their trucks after a weekend of hunting. The officer would either keep them in his office until after school, or call parents to pick them up. No disciplinary action unless they took advantage of the school’s kindness.
Sounds fair to me, but we live in a world of laziness.
IE: “What is the easiest way to take care of problems??? Why, give the same solution to each problem, of course!”
Why would (some) teachers, put in the extra effort to deal with a situation (Taking time from what their union says their job is.) when they can take the easy way out and just say…“Take them away!”
As a parent, I don’t know how many times I’ve had to fight my kid’s school from suspending him because kids where picking on him and causing fights. I am personaly sick of it…(And I’m in Canada…the land of the “Layed-back, eh!”)
In some other thread on bullying and reactions to it, I predicted off-handedly we are rapidly approaching the day when kids doing things like defending themselves from said bullies wouldn’t just get stupidly suspended any more, they would be arrested. This applies to all zero-tolerance suspensions.
I was being too conservative in the timeline in my head. Clearly, it’s happening right now, and stories just aren’t widely circulating as of yet, but are slowly beginning to. As the suspend-and-arrest model expands, bail levels will rise. Five years from now, an honor student will be arrested for drawing a doodle in the margin of his notes that looks vaguely like a knife, which will meet “probable cause” and the bond will be set at fifty thousand dollars, and he’ll end up being gang-raped in the holding cell. School officials will shrug and make noises on it’s regrettable but policy is policy, and still things will continue to get worse.
I feel sympathy for anyone raising children these days. The thought of sending them to any public school for at least the next two decades would absolutely terrify me.
Yes, actually; I formally seceded just this last weekend, as a matter of fact. I’m just an honorary member, now.
Can you tell me how to do it, Featherlou? I mean, some humans are nice and all, but the overall costs aren’t worth the benefits.
It’d be nice to be my own species… I’d be endangered, so they’d give me a nice large room at the zoo. And I’d just tell them that I need a superfast computer with T3 'Net access to survive, and they’ll have to provide that, too.
Oh I can top that easily. I read about a kid who got suspended for drawing a picture of a gun.
Zero tolerance has gone way too far. It is actually contributing to the problem of violence in schools. When there is no tolerance, it is all or nothing. Students are either perfect, or expelled. Students who might want to talk to their teachers or counsellors about other potential Harris & Klebolds are now reluctant to say anything about anyone because it will get those students expelled instantly. So kids who might be helped by some counselling or just a chat with a friendly adult will go without any help, because their friends fear they will screw up their lives.
But even worse is the Pinkerton plan. Some schools (including some in the next county from me) have a plan where you can phone in anonymous tips, and get cash rewards. Turn in your friends for profit! The potential for abuse is massive. Just phone in a bogus tip on anyone you don’t like, and their life is turned to shit. I read about one student who had the Pinkerton plan set up in his school, he printed some protest posters on letter-size paper and planned to post them next to the Pinkerton announcements. He got expelled after posting ONE sheet, and was accused of wanting to commit violence because he opposed the scheme to turn in “potentially violent” students.
Just Say NO to Zero Tolerance.
There was a case like that, according to about.com. It started with a teacher confiscating a sketch the student had drawn years earlier. It portrayed, in cartoon style, himself and a friend shooting at an alien ship over the school. This led to a search, during which security found a box cutter in his wallet. (He had to carry it for his job as a stocker in a supermarket.)
Beyond the school disciplinary action, he was arrested and held for 15,000 bail. His mother, a single parent of two, couldn’t even raise the ten percent needed for arraignment, and it took five days for her to get legal aid; she also couldn’t afford private counsel. I don’t know the end of the story, but all that is bad enough.
Well I am going to be the lone one to point out something: We live in a climate where the teachers and principals have zero leeway. Don’t blame it on them, blame it on the politicians who make the stupid laws. Somebody is voting for the guys who make this kind of laws. I think the insulting letter to the principal was uncalled for. I would sent it to the lawmakers who are writing laws like this all the time to gain support of the activists that vote for them.
If the principal sees a knife and does nothing and then something happens, everybody would be all over him and demanding his head on a platter. The problem is not the principal, the problem is the attitude of all of us because we want to have our cake and eat it too. Remember you can all affect the process of making laws when you vote.
As someone noted before, Zero Tolerance is too often a license for Zero Thinking. To say that the school administrator, the police, the judge or some one else in the chain of event had no options is simply a dodge. Every one of the people involved, from the policeman right up the chain, had some discretion in the matter. For the kitchen knife in the car situation to have gotten as out of hand as it seems to have some one in that chain of responsibility has abused his discretion by failing to exercise it. It is all too easy to point to some One-size-almost–fits-all statute or rule as an excuse for not using a little common sense. “ I was just following orders” is not a rational response to the sort of situation. Of course there is discretion. It just takes a little guts to use it.
Very good point. The Nazi’s “were just following orders”.
The rule is stupid, no question about it, but I anot about to blame the people who followed it. Where are the people who wrote it?
A lot of the time the rules do not give them discretion and in the climate we live in I don’t blame them for not taking the risk.
Suppose one day a kid stabs another kid and later it is discovered a teacher saw the knife and did nothing: you’d all be asking for the teacher’s head. Don’t forget that at every school where there’s been an incident the teacher’s are being sued even if they never came close to seeing a weapon but just because they should have noticed the kid was “troubled”. I don’t blame them for being paranoid. That is the position in which they have been put.
Another example: Domestic violence. It used to be the police would arrive at the scene and had discretion to make arrests or not. If it looked like people could resolve the situation then they’d leave them.
But people were complaining that women were not strong enough to press charges and would change their mind once the police arrived as they did not want their guy taken to jail. To remedy this laws were passed which took away all discretion. If there had been any physical contact, as much as a shove, then they had to arrest. No leeway, no discretion, no ifs ands or buts. So now you see all sorts of ridiculous arrests. But don’t blame the police. Blame the politicians and the citizenry who vote for the politicians for putting them in that situation. Cops and teachers are walking a tightrope. You cannot take away by law their discretion and then blame them for not exercising what you just took away.
So, in other words, it’s all hopeless, and we should just nuke the planet and start all over.
Actually, I like that idea…
will be on Good Morning America between 7 and 8 on 5/28. Her speech is being broadcast on 93.3 FM in Tampa at 6:40 AM on 5/29. She is slated to appear on Leno sometime next week (6/5 maybe?).
Got this info from a classmate of hers who helped her write her speech, so it’s valid.
The effect of Zero Tolerance policies without any wiggle room is to place power and authority in the hands of the very people who are least qualified to exercise it. I will not argue that the street police officer and the school security officer should not have power. I will argue, however, that the decision made in haste and under pressure with out a chance to consider the full facts and circumstances should not bind the people who have to deal with situation farther down the road. If the decision to take some punitive action because innocent behavior meets an overly broad statutory definition is an irrevocable decision, then we have no need for school administrators (in the knife in the car situation) or prosecutors and magistrates (in the domestic assault situation). We can put the whole thing on automatic pilot and let the machine run on its own.
Protests to the contrary notwithstanding, there is discretion at every level, from the street cop all the way down the chain to the presiding judge. To fail to exercise that discretion because of a fear of criticism is simply an abdication of personal responsibility. People are not made school administrators and county attorneys and judges to do the things that will insulate them from criticism; they are put in those positions to exercise their own good judgment. If fear of criticism prevents them from exercising their own judgment, maybe they ought to find something else to do for a living, a job that doesn’t involve thinking.
It’s really easy; all you do is say, three times in front of a witness, “I secede from the human race” and you’re out; sort of like an old Irish wedding. Now I don’t have to worry about any of the things plaguing humans. I still haven’t got my endangered species status, though, or my superfast computer. Hmph.