6-year-old suspended over Cub Scout utensil
 

NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.

Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/ed...o_interstitial

Reason #234,974,082,304 that most of this country's efforts to "crack down" on violence are just plain cracked. I get zero-tolerance for "weapons," but give me a break. He's six and it's not exactly a butcher knife. The other cases in the article are just as ridiculous.

Seems to me like the kiddo's 14th Amendment Due Process rights were violated.

yup, i thought this was bs. i wonder what they think reform school will teach him :rolleyes:

btw, the title of the thread is incorrect, he was suspended, not expelled.

Thanx, fixed it.

Zero tolerance = zero common sense.

The part about the 3rd grader expelled for bringing a knife to cut her birthday cake- and the teacher used the knife and THEN called the principal???:eek:

common sense is so uncommon!

Reminded me of this story.

Wow. That's pretty damn stupid.

I do wonder, though, how they found out he had the weapon in his car (not sure if it's mentioned in the article -- couldn't read the entire thing).

They have changed the laws in Texas to ease up and give some discretion to site principals because of some over the top cases.

In one instance, an honors kid, who'd never been in any trouble was called out of class because she had a "weapon" in her car. Turns out it was a "prop sword" that her brother, who participated in theater arts, and was appearing at the Renaissance Fair, had left in the car after the weekend. She was suspended, sent to a district alternative education center, and prosecuted by the DA for a Class 3 felony, eventually it was dropped.

Another case: One former Katy, Texas, high school student says he understands that administrators are trying to create a safe environment, but that they are going too far. A sophomore in 2001, he was late to biology class one day and his teacher sent him to the office for a tardy slip. While he was gone, he says, she asked the class to turn in their spiral notebooks - but no one told him to turn in his notebook when he returned, and his grade dropped from a B to a C.

So he scribbled her name on a piece of paper labeled "permanent list of people who piss me off" - a joke, he says. He then tore up the paper and threw it in the wastebasket. But by day's end, he was in handcuffs. He spent the night in juvenile hall, having been declared a "terrorist threat," and spent eight weeks in an alternative school.

Here's a website that lists the most amazing ones nationwide:

http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/zerostup.html

some highlights: A third-grader has a brother serving in the Army in Afghanistan. The proud third-grader draws a picture of his brother. The drawing shows his brother with a gun. Suspended

"Terrorist threat" criminal charges were filed against two 8-year-olds in Irvington, N.J., for "playing cops and robbers with a paper gun."

A young boy is suspended from elementary school for pointing his finger at someone and saying "Bang." It seems the school's Zero Tolerance rule extends to "Pretend" guns, including fingers.

Another school will let kids point fingers, but only if they have a "Permit."


Pretty crazy stuff.

That is just asinine. It is hard to believe people can be that uptight.

Zero Tolerance is a f***ing joke. The only school I went to with a serious crime problem spent more time figuring out who wrote "penis" on the bathroom wall than actually enforcing this stuff. I went to elementary school before this crap became the feel-good solution du jour, but I've got a few hilariously stupid stories of my own from high-school:

1. Getting bitched out by the SRO for having in my possession a drawing of a Barret M82 sniper rifle (for those of you who don't know your guns, this bad-boy costs $15k assuming you can even find one, not something a kid could afford) given to me by one of the cadets in my JROTC company. Nothing happened, I still have said drawing hanging prominently in my dorm.

2. Called down to SRO's office for "looking up weapons" on GlobalSecurity.org (yeah I was a military nerd in HS). What I had actually looked up was the specs on a tank. He gives me some BS, I question how the hell a high school student is supposed to buy or build a tank, he's humiliated and forced to let me back to class.

Zero-Tolerance needs to go 10 years ago. What ever happened to common sense and discretion?

ETA: So I'm not longer "equipped" to determine if a kid with a book of rifle drawings is a threat to myself, himself or others? God this article makes me weep for humanity.

Only law enforcement is equipped to make these decisions? Reary?

Requirement to be a school administrator: bachelor's in education plus a master's in administration.

vs.

Requirement to be a police officer: (maybe) high school diploma? Some sort of state certification?

If administrators aren't equipped to make these 'tough' decisions, they should not be trusted to run schools, supervise teachers, ensure kids are safe, etc.

I thought a lot of police officers needed bachelor degrees now, at least in larger departments.

Yep.

Speaking of simple situations blown completely out of proportion by ridiculous school policies... When my sister was in high school, she and a friend went to the bathroom during lunch. Turns out, that's is a big no-no at this particular school. She and her friend were suspended for 3 days.

So when are students supposed to go, you ask? During the 3 minutes they have in between classes. :rolleyes:

that's messed up!

last night the school board ruled that the little boy did not have to attend reform school and that they were going to amend that rule.

I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing. Often times it is the kid who really has honest intentions who gets shafted by these "strict liability" type of rules. But still, what he brought to school was a knife. And I fail to see how his 14th Amendment due process rights were violated. It was a school policy. He violated it. So what if he is six? They knew that 6 yr olds would be included in the group affected by the policy.

A student at the high school where I taught was suspended for 365 days. He had gone hunting over the weekend. That Sunday he was going to the school for a Relay for Life event. He forgot to take his hunting rifle out of the back of his truck. He realized it not long after he got there when one of his friends told him. Before he could get back to the truck to go home, he was in handcuffs. His family appealed but to no avail. He was an honor student and one of the nicest students in the school. Granted the situation is slightly different, but it goes to show that these schools really are drawing a hard line about this kind of thing.

That's the extent of your due process analysis? :rolleyes:

Well you didn't ask me, but as the mother of 3, here is my opinion.

I think context is everything. Do I think weapons should be allowed at school? No. However I also don't think there should be an across the board inflexible policy regarding it. A policy that states: no weapons and here are the possible punishments... yes.

I see it as a difference between a child bringing a knife and eating with it versus a child bringing a knife and holding to another child's neck. The first child should be spoken to about why we don't bring knives to school. The second should possibly be expelled/sent to reform school.

About the student that had a hunting weapon in his car? If he told someone himself and said it was an honest mistake, then he should have been sent to class to learn about gun safty/never leaving it in the car. Not expelled. Maybe even had an agreement to have his car/locker searched on a regular basis for some amount of time to show that he wasn't making the mistake again.

I know many school districts have very ridgid policies because they fear lawsuits if they have any bit of discretion. A parent might cry discrimination or its not fair. But I still think that context should matter.

And those rigid policies comes from too many kids killing other kids in school near school around the shcool and after school and it has resulted in panic button politics.

The moment we see kids with something that could be misconstrued as a weapon (per the cartoon a few poasts back) they are automatically deemed as 'troublemakers'.

let's thank the perps that has made it bad for those who are innocent.

^^ I completely agree

:rolleyes:

Let me try to make this easy for you. Whether I think it is okay for kids to bring knives to school (even if they are Cub Scout camping knives that are duller than what would be in the cafeteria) and whether I think there are due process issues involved are completely unrelated questions.

I have not offered a due process analysis, largely because one or two news stories don't provide enough information to make any reasonable analysis. But were I too undertake a due process analysis, it would not begin with whether the policy is a good or bad policy. It would probably begin with the question of whether automatic suspension, possibly without any hearing or appeal rights, implicates the due process rights of the student. A due process analysis would typicall have to do with how the consequences of violating the rule were imposed, not with whether the policy was valid or was violated to begin with.

deepimpact basically said it was school policy, intended to include students like him and he violated it. As a second- or third-year law student, she should know (1) that whether a law or policy applies to someone who violated it is usually irrelevant to a due process question, and (2) people's convictions for crimes are overturned everyday not because they didn't violate the law but because they were denied due process.

I had to memorize the Matthews v. Eldridge Balancing Test for 14th and 5th Amendment Due Process analysis. I imagine that every law student in the country has to do this at some point.

1. Private interest effected by an official action taken by a government agency, official, or non-governmental entity (company) acting as a governmental agency
2. The risk of some deprivation being erroneously inflicted on respondent, through the process used or if no process is used.
3. The government’s interest in a specific outcome.

Slighty off topic, but I hope of the GC legal minds can answer. I'm ashamed to admit I don't know the constitution as well as i should. What is the difference between the 14th and 5th amendments. I thought the 5th amendment guaranteed due process, but then the 14th does the same thing. Am I missing something?

As someone who has practiced law for several years, you should recognize that there is a difference between the majority of cases where the courts decided that due process rights had been violated and this case.

But how do the officials know that all he intended to do was eat with it? How do officials know that someone else might not have grabbed the knife and used it in a harmful way. The bottom line is that kids should not be allowed to bring weapons to school despite their actual intentions for doing so. I prefer for schools to be strict about this than to let it ride and find that chaos results. And if the decision is made on a case-by-case basis, then you run the risk of discriminatory practices settling into place.

There was nothing confusing about the policy. And no one can argue ignorance as an excuse because parents and children are expected to know these policies. If they are applying it to everyone across the board, then again, there is no problem.

Of course there are -- many, many differences. In fact, believe it or not, I agree with you that there isn't likely a due process issue here.

That doesn't change the fact that those criminal cases show why simply saying it was policy and he violated the policy isn't a due process analysis at all.

Wow. It's pretty gutsy (read: ignorant) for a law student to call out someone with professional accomplishments the likes of MysticCat's.

ETA: I had completely intended to write "read: arrogant" instead of what's above. In fact, I honestly thought that's what I actually typed until I read someone's post with my statement quoted. Part of me feels like I should apologize... most of me doesn't. I think either "arrogant" or "ignorant" is appropriate here.

Yeah isn't MC a member of the Supreme Court Bar?

I don't recall saying it WAS a due process analysis.

And your point?

Actually it isn't. After all, a majority of the people around here seem to feel that they can call out people in our government who have far more experience than they do in handling certain matters.

And if you notice, MC did say that I was right about the differences and the fact that there really isn't likely a due process issue at stake here.

You mean like the people on here who called out the Bush Administration about interrogation tactics, without being privy to the precise intelligence information?

(Not saying I support them, just pointing out that the "first-hand experience cannot be questioned" argument cuts both ways)

I didn't see those posts so I don't know what was said.

I disagree with your conclusion, and I think building level administrators should be permitted a great deal of discretion in how they handle things. If we come to suspect they abuse that discretion or are incompetent, then we deal with that.

However, I acknowledge that one's experience in school shapes one's perception of this issue a lot. If your school was basically safe, competent, and as non-discriminatory as humanly possible, it makes a lot more sense to say that blanket policies about boy scout knives are clearly stupid.

On the other hand if you went to or taught at Dysfunction Junction H.S., you know why the institution is better with blanket policies that don't allow administrators to undermine the limited about of discipline that is consistently enforced.

You said:

Quote:

Originally Posted by deepimpact2 (Post 1857240) And I fail to see how his 14th Amendment due process rights were violated. It was a school policy. He violated it. So what if he is six? They knew that 6 yr olds would be included in the group affected by the policy.

Usually, when someone makes a statement ("I fail to see how his 14th Amendment due process rights were violated.") and then immediately gives reasons ("It was a school policy. He violated it. So what if he is six? They knew that 6 yr olds would be included in the group affected by the policy."), you can reliably predict that people are going to interpret the reasons you gave as your reasons for the statement -- i.e., the reasons you don't think 14th Amendment rights were not violated, i.e., your analysis.

But go ahead. Tell me I'm twisting what you said, because that's the way it always goes.

You know folks...I am just an average Joe here, legal jargon aside...but back to what ForeverRoses and I were alluding to earlier...whatever happened to simply calling the parents to the school and having a private discussion with the admin and said parents and K.I.M?

Have we become that paranoid a society that we have to get the law involved for everything?

Times like this (not to mention the fact the we need crash helmets for kids with Big Wheels) is why I DON'T want kids.

Well, if people don't advocate for a blanket policy in this regard, they certainly need not complain about all of the school violence that takes place. As I said before, when you start to give administrators discretion, typically you start seeing discrimination and racial profiling. And at that point it is difficult to start "dealing with it" because that's the kind of subtle ting that really is difficult to handle.

I think it is funny that people really are trying to make the school officials out to be bad guys here. In this day and age, with kids as violent as they are, something needs to be done. If I ever had kids, I would feel much better knowing they are at a school that takes that kind of thing seriously.

I suppose it doesn't help that the media is blasting his picture everywhere and constantly labeling him as a little first grade cub scout. Would your reaction have been the same had he been labeled as a little first grade gangbanger who wanted to bring his little utensil to school to eat with it?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33289924...-today_people/

If you read the article. you will notice that it states why the school had this zero tolerance policy in the first place: they wanted to avoid racial discrimination.