- Zero tolerance is fast becoming a cloak of respectability,
used to punish the trivial, while allowing administrators to claim the
mantle of hero. The Mantra "Our Zero Tolerance Policy" is being
heard across the land as justification for some no-brainer decisions:
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- In Greenley, Colorado, school administrators at the Union
Charter School witnessed three boys playing with a water pistol. Bang,
one heavy-handed application of zero tolerance rules and all three boys
are suspended. According to the administrators, the state's "zero
tolerance" weapons law mandates suspension of students who carry,
bring, use or possess a firearm or firearm facsimile at school.
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- I can understand the rules on guns but a water pistol?
Are they serious, apparently so.
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- In another zero tolerance disaster from Colorado a 10-year-old
girl from McElwain Elementary in Thornton, Colorado, was one of a group
of girls who "repeatedly" asked a certain boy on the playground
if he liked them. After the boy complained to a teacher school administrators
suspended her from school. A 10 year old girl, suspended for asking "Do
you like me". The district's "zero-tolerance sexual harassment
policy" was quoted as the "cloak of respectability" to justify
this decision.
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- I have to ask "Have they not heard of common sense?
Have these educators not themselves been taught the meaning of the word
"balanced"?
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- In Jonesboro, Arkansas, eight-year-old Christopher Kissinger
was suspended from South Elementary School for three days. What crime had
he committed? He pointed a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and said
"Pow, pow, pow." Once again the cloak was trotted out. "This
incident violates the School District's zero-tolerance policy against weapons."
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- Really. A breaded chicken finger is now a prohibited
weapon.
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- They punish the innocent and let the guilty walk free.
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- The concept that having "zero tolerance" of
harmless playground games is going to do anything to stop certifiable lunatics
from shooting up their own schools is sheer lunacy. Such policies do have
a cost: how they can do anything other than teach children that adults
have no clue about right and wrong.
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- I wonder if the administrator goes home to his dinner
party and admits the truth "That he suspended a 2nd grader for pointing
a breaded chicken finger". Or does he talk about how zero tolerance
policies were brought in to stop mass murders in the playground, and then
continue with "He had his part to play today" He had to act to
prevent a mass murder. Properly put, This is fraud. It is fraudulent to
claim that an 8 year old pointing a breaded chicken finger is a potential
mass murderer. While administrators waste their time on this trivia the
guilty are laughing all the way to the bank.
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- This brain dead approach to justice does not stop at
the school gates. It also stalks the workplace in many guises, including
the myriad zero tolerance for harassment procedures. Just as the school
procedures spiral rapidly out of control as administrators jump the "heroes
gravy train" so too have the workplace procedures resulted in some
ludicrous decisions. A University Professor, sacked for allegedly using
the word "Pussy" in class. In fact, he head read a letter from
President Woodrow Wilson to his history class and the word was "Pusillanimous".
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- The above cases are the tip of the iceberg which is engulfing
large numbers of Americans in litigation over trivia. The laws on zero
tolerance are damaging to democracy. State sponsored laws are being applied
with such vigor as to constitute an attack on innocent citizens.
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- In an article for Education Digest, entitled "Zap
Zero Tolerance," Russ Skiba and Reece Peterson concluded that zero
tolerance policies were more effective at providing cover for administrators
than students.(2) Zero tolerance was developed in response to legitimate
concerns that cannot be ignored. These concerns may well be valid on occasion.
But few would argue that the above cases warranted strong disciplinary
action. The legislation on zero tolerance is not merely open to misuse.
The legislation surrounding zero tolerance positively encourages misuse.
The secrecy cloaking zero tolerance decisions and the total lack of a vetting
of the accusation for common sense is a deliberate and calculated abrogation
of due process that once made the American legal system the envy of the
world.
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- References
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- 1. Zap Zero Tolerance. Education Digest, April 2000,
By Russ Skiba, director of the Institute for Child Study at Indiana University
and Reece Peterson, vice president of the National Council for Children
with Behavioral Disorders.
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- Eric Pistol is the webmaster of http://mensrights.bizhosting.com
- A website describing the excesses of the zero tolerance approach to alleged
sexual harassment in the workplace.
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