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Editorial: No-tolerance policies may exclude eating utensils

Oct. 21, 2009

On Oct. 11 the New York Times reported about 6-year-old Zachary Christie, a new Cub Scout who excitedly brought a camping utensil, made up of a fork, knife and spoon, to school to show his friends and eat his lunch and was subsequently punished to 45 days at the district's reform school.

Christina School District, in Delaware, reacted in such a harsh manner under its no-tolerance weapon policy, in part influenced by the Columbine and Virginia Tech tragedies, which advocates suspension regardless of intent or weapon. Although the school seemed to have little choice under the policy, these no-tolerance policies leave zero room for reason, discretion or intelligent decisions.

Many may argue that laws and policies are meant to be black and white and that the current nature of society allows for no gray and no discernment. And some may argue that it is impossible to distinguish between the innocent and dangerous. Unfortunately, as a result of fear, we have begun to create a society that outlaws, along with camping utensils, reason and thought.

Life is not a series of black-and-white circumstances and young Zachary's situation should have been looked at as a specific case. However, obviously, no-tolerance policies do not allow for case-by-case discretion. As a result, 6-year-old boys are being thrown in with juvenile delinquents for 45 days, because teachers are not allowed to wield a more reasonable punishment; i.e., confiscating the eating utensil until the end of the school day.

Just as school officials should have allowed their students to view President Obama's speech on education, this law leaves no room for people to take in the available information and make educated decisions based on it.

We understand the fear of igniting school violence, but we hope that the youth of this nation will grow up in a society where there is tolerance and there is grace and there is encouragement to make educated decisions.

Take a moment to look at the size of the knife, featured in several news publications, including the New York Times. It was clearly not intended for violence against Zachary's other first-grade peers, but for showing them his new toy and for eating his school lunch.

In response, Zachary's mom wrote several letters asking school officials to use common sense for the overall well-being of her child. In the New York Times article, Zachary expressed a fear to return to school because the other kids might use this discouraging and unjust situation to make fun of him.

On Oct. 13 the school officials rightly and more justly decided they would revise the district's code of conduct to exempt kindergartners and first-graders from too extreme punishments.

The officials also reinstated Zachary to the school and erased the suspension from his record. As a last, and respectable, course of action, the officials asked Zachary's mom to review and potentially help rewrite the conduct code.

Their secondary response to this case was much more reasonable, which is a direct result of looking beyond no-tolerance policies to more reasonable and fair disciplinary measures.

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