jimpeel
Member
spartacus2002
Yes, they are. Here is one of the more famous cases that was posted at TFL back in 1999.
This is an editorial that was printed at that time.
Colorado Springs Gazette (11-20-99)
Are they doing vehicle searches at schools now?
Yes, they are. Here is one of the more famous cases that was posted at TFL back in 1999.
This is an editorial that was printed at that time.
Colorado Springs Gazette (11-20-99)
OUR VIEW: Near-zero logic?
Sweeping rules on weapons in school leave
little room for common sense
As you'll glean from a glimpse at today's Tell it to The Gazette, readers aren't too keen on Mitchell High School's decision to suspend a student after a random drug search turned up a pocket knife in her car - in a first-aid kit. Permit us to amplify some of our readers' views.
The fact that the senior, Sonya Golden, is an honor student who was named to the Mayor's 100 Teens list for her leadership skills, is beside the point. No one is asking school authorities - in the unfortunate words a school District 11 official used last week in a Gazette report - "to apply different rules to different kids."
That's a red herring, in fact. We join our readers in asking simply that school officials apply common sense.
And to the extent the rules themselves impose an unworkable, one-size-fits-all standard, policy makers should apply due haste in rewriting it.
In this case, Golden had done nothing of record that should have invoked scrutiny in the first place. The school district's security department uses dogs trained to sniff out drugs, alcohol and gun powder, and on a routine search of the high school parking lot the dogs apparently turned up the scent of alcohol around Golden's car. The scent was the result of an alcohol-related crash involving the car's previous owners, Golden believes.
Golden was pulled from class and asked if her car could be searched. She readily consented. It turns out she'd forgotten about the 21/2-inch pocket knife in a first-aid kit she and her mother had prepared and placed in the glove compartment. Busted.
None of the administrators at the high school or at school district headquarters are challenging Golden's account or disputing her intent, which seems to be above reproach. Rather, officials are standing behind district policy, insisting they cannot bend the rules. She got a three-day suspension.
Those district-wide rules, which deem the pocket knife a "standard weapon," also state in part "... A student who violates this policy may be suspended and/or expelled, depending on the nature of the violation." Given the insertion of "may," it's none too clear school authorities' hands were tied. It could be read to mean Golden didn't have to be disciplined at all, depending upon the circumstances.
More generally, such sweeping "zero tolerance" policies, however well-meaning, almost invite abuse at some point. Too often, they're not thought through before they're enacted - as if intended at the time to serve
less as a legal standard than as a political statement in the wake of extraordinary school tragedies and general concerns about discipline. Then, the unintended consequences start to pop up.
Schools are to be lauded in general for trying to rein in the unruly students in their ranks. But overkill isn't the answer. We commend both Sonya Golden and her mother, Tamara Golden, for a measured and gracious response to all this. But we respectfully disagree with their shared sense that sometimes even the innocent must face the music to prevent tragedies on the order of the one last spring at Littleton's Columbine High School.
School officials are kidding themselves if they think they're setting an example for any students who might actually have ill-intent. Plenty of students, and from the looks of it, the vast majority of our readers, see right through that to the net effect: punishing the innocent.
and carrying a multi-tool and folding knife
). In fact, in my school if you werent threatening people with it and such, you pretty much carried anything you wanted within reason (ie no guns, duh). I had more than one teacher who would ask the class if someone had a knife for a box or something, or ibuprofen for a classmate with a headache or game-injuries. And even the dreaded Sudafed and Benadryl!
This was a kid BTW who was constantly disrupting class, cussing at me, threatening me, etc., but he deserved a chance and the administration ignored the zero tolerance laws by not letting me document his behavior (if I did I would have been fired quickly, as a sub that is no problem, and they would have just ripped up the write up anyway).