FAD FOR ZERO TOLERANCE' IS LEAVING A MORAL VOID

When did using your judgment go out of style? Why are people
frantically trying to abandon what slim responsibility they possess
in favor of rigid rules and procedures?

A week doesn't go by without a child somewhere in the country being
expelled from school for offering a Tylenol to a headachy classmate,
or naively bringing a toy weapon to class, or, as was causing the
hubbub in our neck of the woods last week, firing a paper clip with a
rubber band.

The debate seems to be whether the Richmond-Burton High School teen
accused of firing the clip is, as he seemed in early accounts, just a
kid engaged in the Huck Finn mischief that every kid commits at one
point or another. Or, as he appeared once District 157 had time to
start adding its own spin, some sort. of McHenry County juvenile
delinquent waging a war of paper clip terror.

That shouldn't be the issue. The issue here, and in most of these
cases, is the idea of 'zero tolerance," a dumb concept that should be
shelved alongside "an eye for an eye" and the notion that women thrown
into a pond will float if they're witches and sink if they're innocent.

Like all bad policies, the motives behind zero tolerance are pure.
Drugs are bad and guns are bad and neither should be brought to second
grade. Zealous legislators and strenuous superintendents, eager to
show just how enthusiastic they are, have instituted broad, sweeping
policies requiring that any. Conceivable sort of controlled substance
(heroin, Midol, gum) and any kind of weapon (handguns, scout knives,
paper clips) evoke the same harsh punishments.

That's crazy. What is wrong with letting individual educators decide
on a case-by-case basis? If we trust them so little that we need rules
for all they do, then they shouldn't be left alone with kids in the
first place.

Remember Shanon Colsett? The Colorado fifth-grader earlier this year
swapped lunches, accidentally, with her mother. Her mother had packed
herself cold chicken and a 3-inch paring knife to cut it with. The
girl, opening her lunch and instantly realizing she had transgressed,
at once went to her teacher, told her what happened, and gave her the
knife.

Too late. The weapon had been brought to school. The gears of justice
began to turn. The girl was suspended. The family was plunged into the
inevitable nightmare of litigation and publicity, if not exactly
ruining their lives then certainly putting a dent in them.

What's going on here? Frankly, I sense a deeper, weird,
socio-psychological motive. It is as if, frustrated at our inability
to adequately punish the rare instances of monstrous evil such as the
Arkansas school yard snipers, we instead vent our wrath on every Billy
or Timmy with a slingshot.

Another answer might be pure cowardice. When the Colorado
legislators, humiliated by the paring knife episode, put their law
under a microscope, it turned out the girl didn't really have to be
suspended. The adults involved were just being boneheads and blaming
someone else.

That might be the case here. I phoned Ron Erdmann, the superintendent
of District 157, five times, trying to get him to comment on his
district's zero tolerance policy, the one that sent the paper clip
assailant packing and might land him in jail unless a thinking person
intercedes somewhere along the line.

Erdmann wouldn't talk. His-secretary said he was: 1) on the phone, 2)
in a meeting, 3) out of the building, 4) on the phone again. The fifth
time, taking pity, she told me that Erdmann wouldn't talk to me to
defend his policy. He's that proud.

I don't blame him. I'd be hiding under my desk, sucking my thumb, too,
if I was being portrayed as the Martinet of the Week. Who wants to
stand up and take responsibility for that?

Isn't that what this is about? Personal responsibility. Why should a
10-year-old be required to pay for the consequences of her innocent
transgression, while the 34-year-old teacher and the 45-year-old
principal and the 54-year-old superintendent shrug and cower behind
policies? I say scrap the policies and return judgment and
responsibility where they belong: with teachers and principals.

Sadly, that isn't the direction we're going. Mandatory minimum drug
sentences are a perfect example of zero tolerance on a grand scale.
What was offered as a stern message to drug lords ended up, in
reality, with a bunch of 21-year-old Deadheads barefooting down the
side of the road with a pocketful of blotter acid being turned,
courtesy of about $400,000 of your tax dollars, into 31-year-old ex-cons.

At least federal judges fought the measure, they resigned in protest,
they spoke out. We haven't heard a peep from schoolteachers watching
their charges dragged off in manacles. Students, too, have abandoned
their traditional forms of mass protest. In my dream, every student at
Richmond-Burton would show up with a rubber band and a paper clip and,
at the appointed time, fire it at the wall.

But that would take spunk. And as the kid in Atlanta who was
suspended earlier this year for wearing a Pepsi shirt to Coke Day
learned, we have outlawed spunk.

Checked-by: trikydik@inil.com (trikydik)