Posted on 05/14/2011 3:14:21 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Graham Dennis was handcuffed, fingerprinted and charged with possession of a deadly weapon. He was also suspended from school for 10 days. Casey Edsall was accused of having an explosive on school property. He got a one day suspension.
The Eaton High juniors play lacrosse. The explosive device was a lighter. The deadly weapon was a pocket knife. Both are tools the boys use to maintain their lacrosse sticks.
“I tore a couple white strings on the side and I had to replace them with black strings,” said Dennis. “I cut them and burn them there. If I don't cut them and burn them, they fray.”
School administrators heard that explanation, but their zero-tolerance policy doesn’t allow for exceptions. The boys and their parents said that’s absurd.
“I feel like common sense should've come into play,” said Casey Edsall. “And I think it was outrageous, the claims that they made.”
Graham finished his suspension last week. Both boys are back playing and practicing with the team. A coach now carried a tool box for stick maintenance.
But they worry about the next student who gets caught up in a zero-tolerance issue. And they worry about lasting damage to their futures.
(Excerpt) Read more at wjla.com ...
Have you read what happened in Shelton, CT, this week? A kid got suspended for sticking letters up on a wall asking his girlfriend to go to the prom. Of course, the principal (or “headmaster”, can you believe that?) came down on him like a ton of bricks. The press got hold of the story and it went viral. In fact, it went international. Facebook pages popped up all over the place, absolutely excoriating the “headmaster,” who is a woman (some people even debated that). They let her have it, calling her the B word, and some even the C word. It was really very nasty, but people were outraged. The school’s e-mail went down, the phone system went down, the mayor got involved, a couple of state legislators got involved, half the world got involved, and it wasn’t pretty.
The administration tried to stop the kids from talking to the press and discussing the matter on social sites, threatening to suspend them. The kids basically told the administrators to screw off. Some even talked to the press on school property. The boy involved gave interviews — appearing on the Today Show, Fox, CNN and Jimmy Kimmel.
Students threatened to hold an alternate prom, tons of people on facebook offered to pay for it, and lo and behold, today it was announced that the kid is going to his prom.
So what was the result of this? This Headmaster was made to look like a jerk, her reputation tarnished. She better hope that she makes tenure there because all a future employer has to do is google her name.
Zero tolerance is a power grab by the central government to get teachers used to not using their own judgement and instead submitting to a central authority automatically.
To really send these potential terrorists a strong message, they should have sentenced them to at least 10 years. /s
Just good, clean American kid fun. Danger is what made it fun. And the boom, smoke and smell. Raising the grandsons to respect boom stuff, and to know how to have fun with it. They’re getting a healthy dose of firearms training too.
I was asked to help out one summer collating the New Zero Tolerance policy manual, since I was a school volunteer and substitute school secretary at the time.
I thought it was absolute liberal BS then and now!
More and more people are refusing to enroll their children in public schools. Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of the end of public education.
Going a step further, we really don't have to anticipate these school board nazis and their running dog lackeys to march down the streets and take over everything ~ they aren't smart enough for one thing, and we have a plentitude of things we can do to put an end to that march!
(No discussion needed).
So, what is it that's going on where you have a school administrator thinking a cigarette lighter is AN EXPLOSIVE DEVICE?
What that has to do with is the fact they took his away and wouldn't let him carry it on an airplane. He doesn't know, and probably wouldn't understand anyway, but there are TWO different transportation hazardous material standards in this country. One is for SURFACE and one is for AIR.
Even there some things that would otherwise be prohibited from air transport could have a "permissible quantity" so you always have to check the NTSB standards to see what that might be.
There are also security restrictions, so even though your basic box cutter isn't likely to blow up we do have a history of problems (911 springs to mind) with them so their carriage by passengers on their persons is restricted.
The school administrators are acting on POPULAR BELIEF, not federal standards, and when it comes to the determination of what is or is not dangerous for transport or storage under various conditions you need to refer to the appropriate federal standards.
(NOTE: Constitution says ".... weights and measures...." are a federal deal ~ and certainly the determination of "permissible quantities" of otherwise dangerous materials falls under the "measures" clause ~ if you want to argue that out, do it some other time in a different place ~ we have a point to make here).
So, we have some local school administration telling students that they are subject to maximum punishment because, lo and behold, they are hauling around a very dangerous EXPLOSIVE, to wit, a cigarette lighter.
Well, it's only determined to be "explosive" on airplanes, and that school is not an airplane. If it's in a crate or something it can be restricted from carriage in the mails (I know that one well) on surface transportation ~ so you wanna' see Fed Ex or UPS to have a crate of them hauled somewhere, and even there, some shipments could exceed their standards (based on the federal standards BTW), and you might be redirected to a hazmat carrier ~ where you will pay a bundle and a half!
Yes, yes, yes, hauling around a load of cigarette lighters could be risky so you pay for the risk. Hauling around one cigarette lighter in a school is NOT defined as a hazmat situation in the only pertinent regulations ~ to wit, those issued by the federal government.
So who are these school twits dictating local changes to federal standards regarding hazmat?
I say they are IDIOTS ~ and Eric Holder should be down their beating them into the ground.
This lack of common sense among school personnel is truly mind-boggling. Do a subject search for “zero tolerance” on FR and you will find hundreds of similar situations from schools in all parts of the US.
I actually think that the schools are trying to meet quotas. Lately I have been reading that school districts are now requiring racial parity in suspensions. So, if too many black children are suspended/expelled, then some white children have to be suspended on trumped up charges to bring their numbers up. Just about every one of these ‘zero tolerance’ cases involves whites.
Lack of common sense? This is a pedophile program... it’s menat to make people think they are stupid and cannot think nor speak about anything.
If you want your kid to go to school, enroll him in a private school and pay for it.
If you don't want your kid to go to school, fine.
When half the kids graduating from inner-city schools are functional illiterates, it really doesn't matter that they had a free government school education available to them, since they squandered the opportunity.
WE used to take our shotguns to school to try to kill supper on the way walking home. Ofcourse I’m an old man and lived ina rural area. Funny, our guns never got involved in any ofthe fights we had.
Zero tolerance needs to be attacked at it's root - as personal lawsuits and criminal charges against administrators and teachers for abuse of power under color of authority, and for lack of authority from the refusal to uphold professional responsibility.
States and the Fed need to pass laws declaring "tolerance" inherent in all teaching of any kind whatsoever and "zero tolerance" a crime. Personal responsibility needs to hang over these cruel hypocrites at all times, and indemnification must be denied for any blanket decision by a teacher or administrator.
Once some of these arrogant jerks are in jail, the rest will knock this abuse off. Teachers and administrators have become vicious collectivist kapos, and need to be reigned in - hard. Even talking to them as an adult has become impossible, as they literally sneer and strut. Seeing the stupidest, raised as high as possible, is an ugly thing.
It is discouraging to read the posts from conservatives. If they can’t understand that socialism, collectivism, and voter mob management is the heart and soul of government education, and if they continue with the vain hope of possible government school reform then we have a long way to go. Government schooling will be with us for many more decades.
It really says something about the quality of government work when people refuse something that is offered for free (public education).
We now live in a nation run mostly by pussified men and clueless liberal women.
The main perpetrators of this particular injustice are supposed to be educated but are actually clueless idiots who can’t (or don’t want to) distinguish the threat differential between a $1.00 cigarette lighter and a block of C4.
How can society trust people like this to teach students how to make sensible and valid judgments? The truth is they can’t teach it because they are incapable of doing it themselves.
My first reponse was of course - “liberal idiots”.
Second response was “gee - I need to take the tools out of my kids’ lax bags” - (what these guys had was super common.)
Then I relaized - I could walk in to pick my kid up from school with my cigar lighter in my pocket - accidentally of course, no intent to ignite the “explosive device” - WTF would these knumbskulls do - arest me?
Every dad in the city - needs to go down to school property - and light up a cigar.
And as I write that - evil anti-extablishment comment - I realize - they probably have “no smoking on school grounds” law enforcement.
And it is right about there - that I start to realize what we have lost.
Maybe the dads need to go to school -light their cigars - but not smoke them.
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100% correct.
Go to the head of the class.
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