INJUSTICE BREEDS CONTEMPT

Re: "Student expelled over gun - Father forgot it was in borrowed truck,"
Sept. 15.

A Garland high school senior, in the upper quarter of his class, who had
attended Garland schools since kindergarten and who had never posed any
sort of disciplinary problem, borrows a truck to drive to school on Aug.
28. A drug/gunpowder sniffing dog, presumably employed by the school
district, indicates a problem with the truck. The student voluntarily
allows the truck to be searched by school officials. A handgun is found in
the truck. All concerned - the student, his family and all school officials
- - appear to agree that the student had no knowledge of the gun's presence
in the borrowed truck, and had no intent to violate any law or school
district regulation.

Yet the Garland school district sees fit to impose its draconian "zero
tolerance" punishment upon the hapless student. He is expelled for one
year, forbidden to graduate with his class, or to attend any school event
or activity.

The Garland school board president G. Randall Clark says, "It wasn't an
easy decision for any of the trustees."

Baloney, Mr. Clark, baloney! It was the easiest and most spineless decision
you and the board could possibly make. You can piously wash your hands of
the injury you have done to an innocent person, and point to your "zero
tolerance" policy as the defining structure. For you and the board to have
said, "Hey, wait a minute, punishing an innocent kid for someone else's
mistake doesn't make sense. Maybe our policy should be enlarged to
incorporate intent and common sense" - that would have been a gutsy decision!

As it is, all you have demonstrated is the moral and intellectual
bankruptcy of "zero tolerance." Any law or rule that mindlessly punishes
innocent people along with the guilty is, in and of itself, a bad law, and
does nothing but breed contempt for all law.

George Townsend
Plano