Massachusetts high school senior Erin Cox is being punished after giving an intoxicated friend a ride home from a party. Cox wasn't drinking but her school says she violated the school district’s zero tolerance policy against drug and alcohol use.

http://wtkr.com/2013/10/14/sober-student...-at-party/

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I smell a lawsuit; then again, maybe it's just me.

I have a zero tolerance policy against zero tolerance policies

Positive Rep me and I'll vote for Obama in 2016 now Free

This reminds me of the Georgia high school kid who had a steak
knife in his car while it was parked on a school lot... the assistant
principle did a parking lot check, looked into the kids car and saw the knife.

Apparently the kids car suffered a burst water hose in route to pickup
his friend for school, the rupture in the hose was near where it is mounted,
so the kid borrowed a steak knife from his friends house, cut off the
damaged portion and reattached the hose, threw the knife on the back floor
board as they were in a hurry so as not to be late for school.

That's how an zero tolerance rule gets an honor roll student expelled.

Two weeks later, a student at the same school brings to class artifacts for a
"heritage day" project. the African artifacts included several knives, but for
some unknown reason the zero tolerance rule didn't apply this time.

I believed you until you added that last part Aphid.

So this kid would have gotten in trouble if her father had a beer after dinner and she was home at the time. Nice way to ruin a kid's scholarship.

All zero tolerance policies are idiotic, and I hate that any politician who is against them gets labeled as soft on crime.

(10-14-2013 06:21 PM)UCF08 Wrote:  I believed you until you added that last part Aphid.

Why would you believe me at all?

Anyway, this happened a couple of decades ago. The school said since a teacher gave the OK for the African artifacts the zero tolerance rule did not apply.

These zero tolerance policies are just lazy administrations who would rather hand out blanket punishment than do their job and hand out punishment where punishment is done.

She got a call from a friend at the party who had too much to drink. She drove to the house just to pick up her friend and take her home.

This is one reason why public education (K-12) is a joke. Unions, wasteful bureaucracies, zero tolerance policies, the emphasis on self-esteem (everyone is a winner) over actual results, low test scores ... pathetic.

(10-14-2013 07:08 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  These zero tolerance policies are just lazy administrations who would rather hand out blanket punishment than do their job and hand out punishment where punishment is done.

The problem with zero tolerance is that in many cases it isn't a school rule, but a state law. Fortunately after some examples like those mentioned here lawmakers have (in some cases) revised those laws. I'm not a school administrator. In fact I serve under them. Like most professions, some are better than others and I've known a couple of lazy ones. The lazy ones didn't last very long. The great majority of them start the day running and don't slow down.

(10-14-2013 07:59 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  The problem with zero tolerance is that in many cases it isn't a school rule, but a state law.

That's still no excuse. It isn't like someone is going to come down and arrest the administrators for not punishing the girl.

(10-14-2013 07:59 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(10-14-2013 07:08 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  These zero tolerance policies are just lazy administrations who would rather hand out blanket punishment than do their job and hand out punishment where punishment is done.

The problem with zero tolerance is that in many cases it isn't a school rule, but a state law. Fortunately after some examples like those mentioned here lawmakers have (in some cases) revised those laws. I'm not a school administrator. In fact I serve under them. Like most professions, some are better than others and I've known a couple of lazy ones. The lazy ones didn't last very long. The great majority of them start the day running and don't slow down.

I apologize for painting with a broad brush but that was my experience in public high school.

(10-14-2013 08:01 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  

(10-14-2013 07:59 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  The problem with zero tolerance is that in many cases it isn't a school rule, but a state law.

That's still no excuse. It isn't like someone is going to come down and arrest the administrators for not punishing the girl.

It is a can't win situation.

The idea, near as I can tell, is to remove all subjectivity in the pursuit of treating all situations the same. The problem of course is that you remove nuance and judgement from the hands of the people on the ground and get crap like this.

I actually prefer zero tolerance polices, they eliminate biases... the fact that
they are ill-conceived and frequently vague is what makes the concept a failure.

A school having a zero tolerance rule about offensive clothing is probably a smart thing,
not defining what "offensive" is, is asking for trouble and acerbates the perception of predilection.

And a teacher and/or administrator should be able to make a judgement call between a bag of weed and an aspirin.

I suspect they do it all the time in reality. It's only a story when they don't.