Keep In Mind That Circumstances Alter Cases

Zero tolerance is a concept very much in vogue these days. It reflects the attitude of a society that demands definitive action.

When zero tolerance is applied inappropriately the result too often is overreaction.

This seems to have been the case recently in Georgia, where a school, in an effort to control student violence, compiled a list of potential weapons. There would be zero tolerance of any of the items listed.

One item making the list was wallet chains like those usually worn by young males imitating gang members and bikers.

Predictably, this strategy went awry. Attempting to enforce the rule with perfect equitability, school administrators gave an 11-year-old girl a two-week suspension for sporting a 10-inch decorative chain attached to her Tweety Bird wallet.

The chain fell into the prohibited category, even though it posed no real threat to anybody. Having committed themselves to the list, however, the school administrators apparently felt they had to act.

The school could have avoided this mess had those in charge understood that while it’s appropriate to refuse to tolerate student violence, it’s inappropriate to pursue that goal by relying rigidly on an arbitrary list of offensive articles. Zero tolerance works when applied to a general class of behaviors. It usually doesn’t when attached to an arbitrary list. Suspension from school is a serious consequence that must be reserved for behavior that’s genuinely threatening.

In our small school district we faced a similar situation that involved students’ clothing. Although in our case the issue was attire that is a distraction to other students, the process we went through was instructive.

We began by compiling a list of objectionable clothing. We spent a long time debating this list. Ultimately, it became apparent that this strategy was unwieldy and inadequate.

What we wound up doing was making a general statement about the function of school and the need for appropriate dress. If the principal judged a student’s attire to be inconsistent with the school’s goal of focusing on the day’s lessons, that student would be asked to call home for a change of clothes. Parents who disagree with the decision can appeal to the school board. This is an appropriate resolution because the adults in charge - the school board and administrators - are allowed to tailor their decision to the actual situation.

Schools that fail to allow for exceptions to their rules open themselves up to ridicule and inappropriate action. At the school board level we call this the need for wiggle room.

Wiggle room is essential because not all possible situations can be predicted and therefore written into the rule book. Leaving some wiggle room also allows principals and others to model to children the fine art of discriminative thinking. What is appropriate in one situation may not be in another. This is a lesson that all kids must learn. It is the lesson a free society must teach. The alternative is a lockstep mentality that is best avoided.

In the case of the Georgia school, the policy statement should have been that student violence would not be tolerated. The list giving students some guidance about what is appropriate should have contained a provision that some items not listed might be unacceptable, anyway, and some items on the list might be acceptable under certain circumstances. That’s wiggle room.

In addition to the school’s role in such issues, the public’s role is to give schools the latitude to make these sorts of necessary determinations. A society that demands rigid adherence to a list of rules or prohibited items too often causes a breakdown of the legitimate process of running our schools. The result is to teach kids that adults aren’t up to the job of making appropriate, situational decisions on their behalf.