School officials in Jeffersonville, Indiana have suspended a middle school student for touching a pill in an act that stretches the zero tolerance policies to a new extreme. Rachael Greer was suspended because she was given a pill by another student and refused it. However, the school decided that, by holding the pill, it was “possession.”
I have written columns criticizing these zero tolerance policies (here), but this one takes the cake.
Greer was given the pill in a locker room at River Valley Middle School. The pills were the prescription ADHD drug, Adderall. She gave it back but, when the other girls were caught, the school decided that she was in technical “possession” of the pills. One of my greatest gripes in these cases is the bizarre interpretations of school officials who cloak draconian and nonsensical actions in quasi-legal rationales.
Janis Joplin missed how one pill makes you suspended:
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall
For the full story, click here.
The more I read about the education systems in the US, the happier I am that my kids go to school in Canada. To punish this girl for doing the right thing right down the line is absolutely ridiculous. Perhaps the next time that she is offered recreational narcotics she try them out…why not, she’ll get the punishment anyway!
So much for textual hermeneutics … or as the robe wearers say … statutory construction …
mespo,
That is what I find most disturbing. What I was able to discern from the article is the following: She was in the girls locker room. That another student put it in her hand. She did not want it and gave it back to the student. That the student felt compelled to tell someone about it (or a camera was in the locker room another issue altogether) and she wrote a note. Then she was suspended like the rest of the students. What I can’t figure out is if she too was placed in alternative education as well.
If those are the facts as laid out, the school system has some serious issues to figure out on this one.
In the words of that great wordsmith, William Shakespeare… WTF?!
One final thought: the article indicates that the child had the pill “put … in [her] hand” by another student. She then promptly returned it, syaing she didn’t want it. To quote the SCOTUS “there is no word more ambiguous in its meaning than ‘possession,'” yet I still do not understand under what construction of the word “possession” (which requires conscious and intentional control over an item), can she be said to have violated the policy. Was the principal in violation for taking the drugs from the student since he too, presumably, held them in his hand? Does intention not matter?
As low level public servants, school officials are not the most courageous lot and, in most cases, they are simply implementing the will of the school board. “Why risk losing your job to possibly protect a kid’s rights,” is the plea I usually hear. It’s also the easiest path. School officials feel like they get it from all sides: parents, the administration, and elected school boards. Only one entity writes their checks however, and one or two disgruntled parents does not really make much of a difference. Only if the community gets involved, and the complaint level rises to a point where it can affect the political aspirations of those on the school board (in these sparsely attended elections) will something happen. Certain influential persons can also affect the decision but that is increasingly rare. It points up the need for courts and laws to protect persons from the general indifference of the State to the rights of its citizens, and even of the general indifference of the citizenry at large to the rights of its constituent members.
Another observation is that these fiascoes always seem to occur in backwater places where conservatism is the order of the day. Conservatism squeezes out compassion and discretion as it piously sacrifices individuals on the altar of rules and order. Read that as fear, and read that further as an obsession with vices, which, of course, goes hand in hand with pernicious religiosity.
Old problem-new manifestation.
It’s Indiana. The most backward, xenophobic place imaginable.
Bdaman,
Just ask Alice…..
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/congress_struggles_to_come_up
Maryland Teacher Thread about taking your meds. One pill makes your nervous and one pill makes you small.
Bdaman,
I am at a loss. What conversation are you speaking of?
The actual crime here is the widespread medication of kids with amphetamines, often encouraged (or even required) by the schools themselves.
My two older children were prescribed the dreaded Paxil and Ritalin when they were 7-10 and it still pisses me off. I tried to fight my ex-wife on it but got the Dr. said answer. Freakin drug companies. I hate them. Like the one congressman said the other day, his father in law was taking upteen different meds. from six different doctors and after they went thru the list they were able to eliminate over half.
Good thing its not New York 1973 :-))
Rockefeller Drug Laws Information Sheet
Prepared by Aaron D. Wilson, Associate Director, PRDI
Brief History
In May of 1973, New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller pushed through the state legislature a set of stringent anti-drug laws. Among the most severe in the nation, the purpose of these laws was and is to deter citizens from using or selling drugs and to punish and isolate from society those who were not deterred. “It was thought that rehabilitative efforts had failed; that the epidemic of drug abuse could be quelled only by the threat of inflexible, and therefore certain, exceptionally severe punishment.”1
http://www.prdi.org/rocklawfact.html
AY didn’t we have partly a discussion on this yesterday?
Puzzling,
Maybe I missed it to, but I think she ratted them out based upon this “We wanted to know what would have happened if Rachael had told a teacher right away. Bell said the punishment would not have been any different. District officials say if they’re not strict about drug policies no one will take them seriously.”
She wrote a statement.
The actual crime here is the widespread medication of kids with amphetamines, often encouraged (or even required) by the schools themselves.
This action by the school punishes a thoughtcrime. Greer should check her class schedule tomorrow to be sure that her 8:00 AM hasn’t been moved to Room 101.
What’s next in this story? Greer’s arrest in class for possession of a Schedule II narcotic? There’s a lot of free publicity here for a media-starved police department.
How does this school know what goes on in the girls locker room anyway? Have they been taking lessons from the Lower Merion School District?
BTW,
This Zero Tolerance law has been criticized by even the Prosecutor’s as going over board. It takes the discretion out of the Judges hands.
eniobob,
You beat me to it. I had to change the format from an AOL Vid.
White Rabbit from the Jefferson Airplanes. However “White Rabbit” was written by Grace Slick while she was still with The Great Society, that broke up in 66.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIP0YNALsdk&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
“Janis Joplin missed how one pill makes you suspended:
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall”
You mean “Jefferson Airplane”