Discipline codes need to be tough and carefully drawn.
Recently we've seen a number of media stories about students being suspended or expelled for what look like silly, little infractions of school rules. Remember Brooke Olson, the 13-year-old honor student from Kingwood, Texas, who was sent home when a bottle of Advil was discovered in her backpack? And Erica Taylor, another 13-year-old honor student, who was caught with a Midol tablet? Erica was suspended from her Fairborn, Ohio, school for 9 days. Kimberly Smartt, the student who provided the Midol, got 14 days because, the school district said, "distribution" of drugs is a more serious crime than "possession." The latest story is of Jenna Fribley, a 15-year-old honor student from Indianapolis, Indiana, who was expelled when she brought a Swiss Army knife to school.
All of these stories present the students as the wronged parties. And along with sympathy for youngsters victimized by rigid rules, there is also a snicker at the expense of school administrators who evidently can't tell the difference between bringing an over-the-counter drug to school and selling crack cocaine from your locker. Readers are invited to share in the laughter - but I'm not so sure these stories are funny.
Undoubtedly, some school discipline codes are badly written. Depending on the seriousness of the offense, it is a good idea to give students a warning before throwing the book at them. That's why some driving offenses result only in points against your driver's license while others lead to its immediate revocation. But when it comes to safety and order in the schools, it is better to err on the side of being too tough than too perm1ss1ve.
There are probably reasons for some of the silly looking rules that were not apparent to those who wrote the news stories. For example, what if a student has a dangerous allergic reaction at school to a medicine that her parents did not authorize? Who is going to be held responsible -- and perhaps sued for having been careless? The administrators who are being held up to ridicule. And middle-class parents, the ones who think their kids should not have to abide by school regulations because they are such good kids, will be the first ones to call the lawyers.
American parents and the public have been telling us for years that they want tough discipline policies that are enforced across the board. Now that school districts have started listening, the last thing we want to do is laugh the discipline codes out of existence because of some unfortunate excesses. Instead, we should applaud school districts for taking a big step toward making schools safer and more productive places and encourage them to tinker with the codes until they get them right.
The story about Jenna Fribley, the honor student with the Swiss Army knife, suggests an additional danger -- preferential treatment. There is no suggestion that Jenna did not know the rule against bringing weapons to school or broke it inadvertently. The explanation given in a local newspaper is that Jenna considered the knife a "tool" because she had used it in an archaeological dig (''IUPI dean takes up cause of Pike expulsion he deems unjust," Indianapolis Star, October 23, 1996). Jenna's supporters are angry not because she is being unjustly accused of breaking a rule but because the rule is being applied to an honor student. A dean at a local university lays this right on the line: "When we start expelling our honor students as if they were criminals, we're hurting not just the affected students, but our schools as a whole."
Jenna Fribley's punishment -- missing the better part of the semester -- is severe, and perhaps there are reasons for relaxing it. But is the fact that she is an honor student one of them? If so, would we recommend that the school be slightly harder on a B student who brings a knife to school and even harder on someone who has a C average - all the way down to socking an F student with the full force of the law? The fear that discipline codes will be enforced in this way is what makes minorities so suspicious of them and so ready to call foul -- even though poor minority children are the ones who suffer the most from disorderly schools.
If they are to work, discipline codes need to be tough and carefully drawn. Schools must be willing to revisit the codes until they get them right, and then they must enforce them consistently so the codes are perceived to be fair as well as tough. But schools can't do this alone. Parents must tell their kids that they have to follow school rules - and then stand by their word. If we do anything else, the new school discipline codes will soon be as worthless as the ones they are replacing - and that's no laughing matter.