An Associated Report (on the CTV.ca website, for example) describes yet another controversy stemming from the outrage-inducing “Vagina Monologues” as three honors students receive in-school suspension for the use of the word “vagina” during a Friday evening event.
The school principal, Richard Leprine, claims the suspension is for disobeying an order to not use the word. The girls did disobey, even going so far as to speak the word in unison when they got to that point in the reading. However, the principal doesn’t actually have a right to suspend their right to free expression, so the girls are under no obligation to follow such an order and a subsequent punishment is an abuse of power.
Most telling to me is Leprine’s quote in the AP article: The school “recognizes and respects student freedom of expression,” Leprine said. “That right, however, is not unfettered.”
As has been previously discussed on this site and others, the only fetters are when such speech indicates a threat to the safety of others within the school. Disagreement about when speech ascends to the level of threats notwithstanding, I think we’re not going to find anyone arguing that the word “vagina” threatens anyone’s safety.
I think this particular play is silly. The girls knew they were going to spark a controversy. As you’ll see in the photo that accompanies the article, they are happy they got the reaction they did and probably went through their suspension pleased to be there, too, because of the reason why.
Nonetheless, good for them for highlighting once again the tendency of public schools to over-reach given authority.
I hadn’t bothered to write about the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case because there’s already so much material out ther about it and I figured those of you interested in the ills of zero tolerance would already know about it. So when it showed up today on one of my favorite blogs, Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web by James Taranto (fifth item,) I was cool with that.
Taranto also goes on to talk about a six-year-old accused of sexual harassment as reported in the Enterprise of Brockton, Massachussetts, a case I didn’t catch and he did. I can only hope that’s because I don’t have the awesome power of a world-class paper behind me!
I encourage you to read what he has to say over there on BotW. I’ll not bother to steal his thunder.
The Sentinel of Carlisle, Pennsylvania reports on a Mechanicsburg area boy who has been expelled for weapons possession. The reason he had a knife was that he took it away from another boy on the morning school bus to stop him from threatening another student.
He made one clear mistake in that he returned the knife to the original owner on the afternoon bus ride, and that kid turned around and threatened his victim again. That was just foolishness. (As an aside, the boy doing all this threatening with a knife has been charged by the police, and I have no sympathy for that one.)
The other “mistake” is that he didn’t immediately take the knife to school administrators when he got to school. From the Sentinel article:
Middle School Principal Len Ference testified that had the boy taken the knife to the school office and reported the threat to administrators, they would have investigated, but he probably would not have been disciplined.
Ference said the middle school, through its anti-bullying program, encourages students to take a stand and come forward to officials any time there may be an infraction of the rules. The boy did not do that.
That easy enough to say after the fact, but it’s not clear that it’s really the case. Quoting again from the Sentinel’s story:
State law requires school districts to expel students found to be in possession of weapons, no matter what the intent, Hood said Tuesday. However, the school code gives superintendents the discretion to modify the minimum one-year expulsion for the offense if circumstances warrant it.
…
“The victim at no time could feel safe during the school day,†[Mechanicsburg Area School Superintendent Joseph] Hood said, adding some amount of expulsion is necessary for the boy and other students to realize the weapons ban has to be taken seriously.
We’ve seen this before, with kids realizing they have inadvertently bringing a weapon to school, voluntarily turning over the weapon to the administration, and getting caught up in zero tolerance anyway. Our previously reported story involving a BB gun is a perfect example. If the boy had marched into the principal’s office and had a knife in his hand, even as part of reporting a crime, the state law, as described in the Sentinel, would still apply. It’s convenient for the administration that this boy didn’t trust them, as they don’t have to fall back on a “our hands are tied” defense for a bad decision.
As reported in the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky, a boy has been suspended from school for expressing his desire to kill other students on his MySpace page.
I’m not a big fan of people threatening others with death, but from time to time, I’ve had such a desire, too. Fortunately, ZeroIntelligence.net isn’t MySpace, which Crosby Middle School, or at least Jefferson County Public Schools, seem to think is within their jurisdiction. To help clear up my confusion on this, I’ve sent Lauren Roberts (lauren.roberts@jefferson.kyschools.us), spokeswoman for the school system, the email that follows. I will update this posting once I hear back from her, if I do.
Ms. Roberts,
…snipped introductory text…
I do want to give you an opportunity to express the point of view of Jefferson County Public Schools, so I ask you a few questions:
1. When did the regulation of speech on MySpace first fall within the jurisdiction of Crosby Middle School?
2. If it does not, why was this not referred to proper authorities?
3. What is the language of the school policy violated and does it allow the reach of the school to extend beyond school property and even into cyberspace?
4. Have you ever desired to kill anyone?
5. If so, have you ever told anyone?
6. If so, were you suspended from your school or job?
7. Last year, Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams told a group of schoolchildren, “Right now, I would like to kill George Bush.†Would you allow Ms. Williams to speak at Crosby Middle School?
8. Have you checked the 265 people on 43 Things that want to kill someone to make sure they don’t attend Crosby Middle School? (http://www.43things.com/things/view/13726)
I look forward to your responses.
Blue skies,
-Aaron
I recently reported on the case of a student expelled because two other students accused him of having brought a gun to school the previous day. He was expelled for a year despite no actual gun being found.
I have now had the opportunity to speak to the expelled student and his mother, although the mother has asked that they remain anonymous. They reiterated their assertions that the boy did not bring a gun to school and claim that he neither owns nor have access to a gun at all.
The cell phone message left by one of the accusers was played for both the principal and Officer King, an employee of the sheriff’s department that is regularly stationed at the school. According to the boy, he was told that the threat was irrelevant to the accusation and that he should take that to the police separately. Unfortunately, he didn’t, but I can’t really blame him after his experience with authority figures refusing to listen.
In an interesting turn of events, one of the accusers has since been expelled from school, presumably for an unrelated interest, and is at the same alternative high school as the boy he accused. I have to wonder if Mr. Byrnes would still feel as confident in the veracity of the accuser considering his other expulsion-worthy activities. I can only wonder because Mr. Byrnes chose not to return my call.
Of course, the school board’s view is only based on a reading of what the principal decided, as it turns out that the school board chose not to even hear the appeal. Instead, they read the principal’s report and chose to support the principal’s decision. The accused wasn’t given an opportunity to establish any credibility with the school board directly. Mr. Byrnes parallel to a court of law is even weaker than it previously appeared.
Based on what I’ve been able to learn, I don’t think this is about an alleged gun at all. The accused is not a model student, as he gets Bs and Cs for his grades and has had some other trouble, although minor compared to a gun charge. We know that schools are under enormous pressure to show academic success. I think Mr. Vaughn saw an opportunity to rid himself of a mediocre student and raise, however, slightly the statistical performance at his school. Confronted with leaving no child behind, he has shunted a child to somewhere else where he need not deal with it further, all based on hearsay. This isn’t leadership, but avoidance.
Tosheena Robinson-Blair of The Daily News Journal of Murfreesboro, Tennessee reports on a student’s expulsion based purely on eyewitness testimony of two other students who reported the expelled student had brought a gun to school the previous day. The incident took place at Oakland High School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
According to Rutherford County Schools spokesman James Evans, Oakland Principal Butch Vaughn found the two students, who reported the incident, to be credible.
“This matter went through all levels of appeal, and they didn’t overturn it either, based on the evidence presented. The reason why we couldn’t find the gun is they reported it the day after they saw it,” Evans said.
“With zero tolerance you don’t have to have a history. We understand that students from time to time make up stories about other students, but that’s what the principals are there for — to determine if the students are telling the truth or not.”
(more…)
Education reporter Tess Kalinowski reports in the Toronto Star that zero tolerance policies are not harmful only to “good” students, but also to those with more troubled lives, minorities, and the poor:
It’s an issue a new coalition of Toronto youth and community advocates say has been allowed to fall off the public radar.
But, with a provincial election looming, it’s time for the Liberal government to repeal Ontario’s controversial Safe Schools Act, according to the group behind the Safer Schools Campaign.
It says the so-called “zero tolerance,” tough discipline law is still being used arbitrarily to push kids, particularly minorities, out of school and into the criminal justice system.
Many of the stories we report on this site involve good kids caught up in overly broad definitions of what constitutes bad behavior. Thus, we have cake knives in home economics treated the same as switchblades or a comic book-inspired T-shirt treated the same as delivering a message about, say, killing cops for fun. But at the heart of the problem with zero tolerance policy is the lack of gradation, and that extends even to when a more troubled child has a legitimate minor infraction treated the same as a more serious one.
The punishment for a minor infraction, such as weaponless fighting, becomes extreme, with the child under long-term suspension or even expulsion as opposed to punishments such as an after-school or in-school detention. The more extreme punishments can push students out of the school and into a life on the street. Micheal, who’s last name was withheld in the article and was a community volunteer, said it well: “You’re saying, ‘Here’s a chance for you to go outside and make yourself bad.’”
Pressure is rising in Ontario to repeal the Safe Schools Act for just this reason. Unfortunately, while changes are anticipated this spring, Education Minister Kathleen Wynne declined to give details. Let’s hope that Ontario will see that the one-size-fits-all policy of zero tolerance just won’t work and will instead find a better, more intelligent way.
The fight against Zero Tolerance policies and the harm they cause many good children isn’t over.
While this site was founded and maintained for quite some time by Jim Peacock, events have overtaken Jim and prevented him from continuing his valuable work in this area. His three children are now home-schooled and as you would imagine, this takes a lot of Jim’s time, much of which was previously spent on this site.
My name is Aaron Overton. I also have three children, although they are still in public school. I became interested in Jim’s work some time ago after reading about some of the cases of zero tolerance gone bad on OpinionJournal’s Best of the Web. I was disappointed to see the site become stale and tracked down Jim to find out what was going on.
I have a lot of respect for Jim’s choice to home school, but I wanted to see this site continue to carry on the fight, so after some discussion, Jim and I agreed to transfer the site to me, in effect passing the torch. There’s a fair amount of paperwork involved in such a thing, but three months later, it’s done.
It will likely still be a couple of weeks before I get this rolling again with the kind of regularity Jim set as the performance bar as I figure out the research and editorial process. In the meantime, I invite you to send your tips in to tips@zerointelligence.net as so many of you have done before with such great value.
This site can and will make a difference. By bringing these stories out more publicly, we can help our children’s educators get back to using their heads when it comes to discipline.
