ZERO TOLERANCE A DRACONIAN MEASURE Ask the oldtimers in Santa Fe. How many mixed a cola and whiskey in a soft-drink bottle and took it to a football game? How many took a beer or two to watch Zozobra burn at Fiestas? How many toasted with cheap champagne following their club's victory at a statewide contest? Many. Yet under the modern schools' zero-tolerance drug and alcohol policies, those students could have been suspended - worse yet, expelled. Born of Congress' Safe and Drug-Free Schools Act in 1994, the policies are an overreaction to a nation's drug hysteria. The anti-gun policies are a reaction to media-created frenzy focusing on violence in the schools. Today, 87 percent of U.S. schools have zero-tolerance policies for alcohol and drugs. The result: 3.1 million students were suspended in the 1998 school year and another 87,000 were expelled, at an estimated future cost of society of up to $3 million per child. All the while, zero tolerance has had no measurable effect on safety in the classroom. In fact, a survey by the National Center for Educational Statistics found that schools with no reported crime were less likely to have a zero-tolerance policy. In spite of what you see on television and read in the newspaper headlines about violence in middle-class suburbs, overall, schools are safer places for children today than a decade ago. Zero tolerance hit the headlines here when three Santa Fe Prep soccer players were expelled for mixing a modest amount of vodka and Sprite in their hotel room after the game. They came forward and confessed; students staged a sit-in; parents protested and the headmaster backed down on the severity of the punishment. Last year two seniors on the Santa Fe High soccer team were suspended briefly for off-campus drinking at Fiestas. With the exception of possessing weapons on school grounds, there is no other area of student behavior where the punishment is completely unrelated to the act. School personnel do not treat a student pushing another student in the hallway the same way as a student severely beating a classmate on the school grounds. The problem with zero tolerance is that it leaves no way to address the severity of the offense - a sip of vodka or bringing a bag of cocaine to campus. It leaves no way to treat repeat offenders more harshly than first-timers, as does our criminal-justice system. If the policy is enforced, it is draconian. If it is not enforced, it is hypocritical. While Santa Fe Public Schools has a more progressive approach to zero tolerance, it needs to be examined. The code of conduct has five levels of action: three days suspension for a first drug/alcohol offense and long-term suspension, expulsion or transfer to another school for subsequent offenses. Treatment can also be used as an option, and it is the one the Santa Fe schools should employ if it is to have a policy at all. Zero-tolerance policies allow schools to ignore the greater problem: those students who are alcohol or drug abusers. Referring these students to programs that teach the life skills they need to shun peer pressure is more effective than expulsion. Studies have shown that programs aimed directly at anti-drug use are ineffective. Drug and alcohol abuse destroy people, families and society. But we should have learned by now that the solution to abuse is treatment, not punishment. Santa Fe's schools need disciplinary policies that put in place some of the recommendations of a Harvard University study: . Advocates who represent students in due process hearings. . Training for teachers and counselors in classroom management and behavioral issues. . A means to monitor disciplinary referrals to avoid over-reactions or favoritism. There is a difference between smoking a cigarette behind the gym and downing a pint of vodka between classes. There is a difference between giving a friend an aspirin and bringing nonprescription drugs to school for sale. There is a difference between bringing a toy ax at Halloween and an AK-47 onto school grounds. Zero tolerance leaves no room for these differences. It is time for schools to use the same criteria as the criminal-justice system: taking into account circumstances, prior offenses and the capacity to understand social norms. As one parent said during the Prep debacle, "Zero tolerance doesn't have to mean the death penalty."
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