ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES CHANGE LIFE AT ONE SCHOOL

MOUNTAIN LAKES, N.J. -- In the high school cafeteria, Bobby Fullman and
Julie Morrison talked about zero tolerance and a prank that went wrong.

Julie, 17, is an athletic blonde, on the tennis team and the vice president
of the senior class. Bobby, 16, is a junior, with close-cropped hair and
quick brown eyes.

Some months ago, they sent a note to a girl in the freshman class,
stringing together random passages from a history text. Some were
meaningless arcana. One mentioned prophecy; one mentioned Hitler. The next
thing Bobby and Julie knew, they were in the principal's office.

Both students have been in the school system of this small, affluent suburb
since first grade. "If you look at us, we don't have bad reputations,"
Julie said.

But in the wake of the April 20, 1999, tragedy at Columbine High School in
Littleton, Colo., where two students in trench coats fatally shot 12 of
their classmates and a teacher, Mountain Lakes High School, like many
others around the country, adopted a policy of zero tolerance to bullying,
violence or threats. The words "prophetic" and "Hitler" in the note set off
an alarm. The two students were interviewed by the principal, Lewis Ludwig,
then sent to the school psychologist for evaluation.

"He asked, did we hear voices," Bobby recalled, derisively. " `Does Jesus
tell you to do things?' " After the psychologist decided they were not
dangerous, they were allowed to return to class. But Julie was bothered by
the automatic nature of the process — how, once it got started, she and
Bobby were judged not by their reputations or histories, but by fears
generated by students in distant schools. "Zero tolerance means well," she
said, "but harms a lot of people doing things innocently."

Mountain Lakes, about 30 miles west of New York City, is a small hamlet of
old stucco houses and man-made lakes, where neighbors like to consider
their good schools and community ties as barriers against the strife of the
world. Twenty-four years ago, I was a senior at this high school. A
generation later, when deadly shootings at suburban high schools began to
fill the news, the cast of characters was instantly familiar: the bullies
and geeks, the jocks and stoners. The isolation and revenge fantasies rang
familiar as well — everything but the deadly outcomes.

After the shootings last month in suburban Santee, Calif., I went back to
Mountain Lakes for clues to what had changed. In this typical American high
school, were the hallway social patterns or student values shifting to make
the unthinkable thinkable? What were the ripple effects of Columbine and
other incidents in a school hundreds, even thousands of miles away?

More than 50 students, teachers, parents, administrators and police
officers described a subtly altered high school landscape, with a new set
of fears, rules and penalties.

To go by the numbers, American schools are safer than they have been in
years. A report by the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit organization in
Philadelphia, noted that students are three times as likely to be hit by
lightning as to be killed by violence in school. But the tide of school
shootings has caused Mountain Lakes, like other suburban schools, to shed
its sense of privileged immunity.

Though the school rarely has more than two or three fistfights in a year,
violence at other schools has lodged itself in the town discourse. "All you
hear about is trench coat murders and school safety, all because of
Columbine," said Joe Guadara, 16, a sophomore who was suspended under zero
tolerance. "It's ruining the high school experience for me."

In the cafeteria, the social order followed familiar topographic lines: the
jocks in one area, the brains in another, the drama club over by the
windows. A sodden French fry sailed from one table to the next, a lethal
projectile, but only if swallowed.

Even before Columbine, some drama members wore black trench coats, and now
some students refer to them as the trench coat mafia. The members receive
this with aggrieved condescension.

Backpacks lie unattended in the hallways, a gesture of trust possible in a
homogeneous student body of just 550. Nobody locks his or her locker. But
some of the old certainties have been shaken. Since Columbine, teachers sit
by all the school entrances to monitor comings and goings. The middle
school basketball team changed its name from the Bullets to the Lakers. The
high school chess coach told a student he could no longer say "prepare to
die" before defeating his opponent.

Justin Lyon, 18, a senior, surveyed the bustling, nearly all-white sprawl
of the cafeteria, viewing it against images from towns like Santee or
Littleton. The cliques were not so rigid here, he said. The bullying was
rarely so severe. But still, he could imagine. "You see those people on
TV," he said. "You think, `I know kids just like that.' "

High school culture is no longer just local, its reference points confined
to the building or the surrounding district. A fashion shown on MTV will
appear in Utah or Louisiana in the same week; a school shooting in Southern
California may echo in Westchester County.

"At this point, you don't take a chance with anything," Mr. Ludwig, the
Mountain Lakes principal, said. In some school shootings, the killers
talked about their plans for days or weeks before carrying them out. Such
talk no longer passes as empty threat. "When you were in school," Mr.
Ludwig told me, "the principal had the luxury to say, `I know the kid, I
know the family, this is nothing to worry about.' We don't have that luxury."

Zero-tolerance policies, conceived to keep drugs and weapons out of
high-crime schools, have been controversial, especially as their reach has
spread. Since the mid- 1990's, every state and the District of Columbia
have adopted some form of zero tolerance, to be interpreted by local
districts. Some have led to excesses. A 2000 report by the Civil Rights
Project at Harvard University and the Advancement Project, a nonprofit
legal-assistance group, documented abuses. A 6-year-old in Pittsburgh, for
example, was suspended last Halloween for carrying a plastic axe as part of
a fireman's costume.

In response to such abuses, the American Bar Association passed a
resolution this year calling for an end to zero-tolerance policies. But
many educators, including the New Jersey Education Association, which
represents the state's 167,000 school employees, support the measures. "I
wonder what members of the American Bar Association would say about someone
walking into a courtroom with a weapon or a bullying attitude," said Karen
Joseph, a spokeswoman for the education association.

In Mountain Lakes, the policy has focused on language and gesture. Zero
tolerance strips away subjective judgments of tone, voice or multiple
meanings. A threat is a threat. For smart, college-bound teenagers, steeped
in the multitextured miscreance of Eminem and "South Park," the policy can
be a tough sell. Shuchi Saraswat, 17, a senior, described zero tolerance as
a minor annoyance, then elaborated in an e-mail message. "It has become a
joke among all the students," she wrote. "If someone goes, `I'm gonna kill
you' (in a joking way), the other person just may laugh at them and be
like, `whatever, zero tolerance.' " She added, "We more mock it than anything."

Eric Koch, 18, a senior, complained mildly that the policy had upset the
school's social hierarchy. Eric, who plays three varsity sports, has
bleached hair shaved at the sides; he is an alpha jock. During his
underclass years, he said, seniors ruled the school through intimidation.
Now, the freshmen were getting out of hand. "Now kids get away with
whatever they want," he said.

Tim Daniels, a classmate, added: "Senior year is supposed to be your time.
Now we're on the same level as anyone else."

On a sluggish loll between classes, a senior used a phrase that was new to
me. She had been blowing off steam this year, she said, and she joked about
breaking another girl's arm. "They threatened to kick me out of school,"
she said, for "further research" — a euphemism for psychological
evaluation. After a conference with the principal and the other girl, she
did not have to go for evaluation.

Mr. Ludwig said he sent six students for evaluation in the last school
year, four so far this year. Seated in his office, Mr. Ludwig, 51, is
personable but wary, with gray hair, a gray mustache and gray suit. Since
he came to the school in 1996 as vice principal, the worst incident on his
watch involved a student showing off a kitchen knife on the grounds.
Another student reported the offender within the hour.

He said he was working with the police on a "lockdown" plan to secure the
school if someone shows up with a weapon.

Like other administrators in high-achieving communities, Mr. Ludwig said he
often felt squeezed between opposing parental pressures, especially as
fears about school violence have risen. "When a kid makes a threat, and you
put him through the process, his parents get upset," he said. "But the
parents of the kid who got threatened are just as upset — more so when you
return the other kid to school. Parents will hear something and say, `I
want to know who it was, and I want to know what they said.' It's very
difficult to get them to understand that we're handling it."

Mariano Guadara, a painting contractor whose son, Joe, was suspended for
threatening a group of students who were picking on him, said that he
appreciated the school's precautions. "We didn't think it was fair, but we
understand why it was done," Mr. Guadara said. "This is a great school
system. If my son sneezes twice in a day, I get a call from a teacher."

Edward Abendschein, another parent, said he was in the minority in opposing
the policy. "They just don't want to be the ones who didn't do anything
after Columbine," said Mr. Abendschein, whose daughter, Lauren, is a
sophomore. "I fear for 20 years from now, when we're asking these kids to
run a society, and we haven't given them the chance to screw up."

In the cafeteria, most students could recite the tale of the calculator. In
the previous school year, a student had compiled a list of names on his
calculator. Most were students "who had crossed me over the years," the
student said in an interview. One was a teacher; one was Neil Simon, whose
play "Rumors" the drama club was producing at the time. The student had
been picked on, bumped in the halls, for years. "I was small, I was skinny,
I didn't play sports, so I was a natural target," said the student, now 18
and a senior.

When the administration learned of the list — the student did not know how,
and Mr. Ludwig declined to say — there was alarm. Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold, the killers at Columbine High School, who took their own lives
afterward, had kept a similar list. The student was removed from school for
psychological evaluation.

In the school's empty auditorium, as rain dripped from the ceiling into big
plastic buckets, the student said that even now he did not know why he
created the list. "That was a question I could never answer for myself, and
I tried," he said, requesting that his name be withheld to avoid calling
unnecessary attention to the incident. He added that he never intended to
harm or threaten the people on it. The psychologist concluded he was not
dangerous, and after three days, he was allowed to return to school. Though
students sometimes taunt him about the list, he said he has mostly put the
incident behind him.

He did not fault the school for its actions. "I knew that they had to
respond," he said. But for his part, he has heard enough about school
violence. "We just don't even want to hear it anymore," he said. "We know
it's out there, and we know it's something we might have to deal with. But
it's not something that they need to lecture to us every time some kid in
California goes to school and tries to shoot people."

Mike Fischer, 18, a senior, said he was one of the students on the list.
Mike is solidly built, with a round face and a tightly rolled baseball cap.
"It freaked me out," he said. He said the experience changed the way he
treated other students. "In the past, if I didn't like someone, I let them
know," he said. "Now I don't pay attention."

In an e-mail message, he added, "I think all of these shootings have made
kids a lot less cruel to the `outsiders.' "

On another afternoon, Ben Baragona sat with some friends by the windows in
the cafeteria. Ben, 18, is on the track team and in the drama club, and he
is one of those who sometimes wear black trench coats.

After the Columbine shootings, most stopped wearing them for a while, but
this year they are back. The coats have caused some resentment and worry in
the school. "It's just like anybody else's coat," Ben said in defense.
"People saw us as mocking Columbine, which we weren't."

For faculty members, zero tolerance poses a different set of challenges. If
they are obliged to report any stray words, how are they to establish trust
with students?

Teachers vary in interpreting their responsibilities. "If I overhear
anything that vaguely resembles a threat, I take it to the administration,"
said Janice Hurley, an English teacher. "I don't think it's my job to use
discretion." Others said they handled most infractions with a quick word.

"I understand the theory of zero tolerance," said Michael Polashenski, who
teaches physics and coaches chess. "But how do I interpret the policy? If I
see two friends shove each other or exchange negative language, is that a
zero-tolerance violation?"

English teachers monitor student journals for threats of violence or
suicide, as well as references to drugs and alcohol. At the school literary
magazine, the Phoenix, editors are required to screen every submission to
make sure it does not violate the zero-tolerance policy.

"A lot of times people don't submit things to the Phoenix because they're
afraid they'll be turned in," said Johanna Dreyfuss, 17, a senior and one
of the editors. She said the current submissions were lousy, but did not
blame the zero-tolerance policy.

One afternoon, Lee Konetschny was at the faculty post by an exit, glancing
occasionally at a stack of papers. Mr. K, as he is known, taught my
10th-grade history class. He denied favoring my older brother.

He found the outbreaks of school violence a warning. "The scary thing is
that you don't know which kid it's going to be," he said. "They don't wear
red jackets or look a certain way. We don't see much aggression or
isolation here. But it can never be disproved. What's going on at home, we
can never fully know."

The irony, he said, is that students today are easier to teach — better
prepared, more considerate of one another, less given to defiance. "I don't
see much gratuitous cruelty."

Zero tolerance may be running its course. Already, some students said, as
it has become more flexible, it is receding into the background. Douglas
Morrison, Julie's father, said he planned to run for the school board,
partly to seek an alternative to the policy.

Looking back, Joe Guadara's friends were still angry about his suspension.
The students who were picking on him, said Rob Flynn, 16, a sophomore, were
deliberately goading him into violating the policy. They were never really
afraid of him. They used zero tolerance as another way to wield power. "If
you hear something, you can make a kid go home for a day," Rob said. "It's
insane, the power you have."

Joe said that school violence, and the obsession that goes with it, had
become a part of life for teenagers after Columbine. "As a generation we've
been treated better than others," he said. "This just puts a blot on it."