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."