Ustwo

Actually you make a good point even though it wasn't your intention.

What a policy like this does is stop Jesse Jackson and their ilk. Long term trouble maker comes to the school with a butterfly knife, and honor student comes to school with a steak knife accidentally in his lunch box.

Both get discovered. School board lets steak knife boy off the hook and suspends butterfly boy with intent to expel him, but you see thats racist because butterfly boy was black and steak knife boy was white. Or maybe steak knife boy comes from a alderman's family, and butterfly boy is poor, well thats not right either, it biased.

Zero tolerance causes some stupid issues, but people are stupid in general, there will always be stupid issues. So while no one should be suspended for an accidental butter knife, schools shouldn't have to deal with all the shit they do. Blame lawyers.

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Plan9

Nope, I was annoying and vocal in that thread, too.

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Sion

DINGDINGDING! We have a winner!

Zero tolerance policies are intellectual laziness, just as racism, sexism, age-ism and any other -isms are.

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ducatiguy

Do we know if there was peanut butter on the knife...i mean that could be the death of like .1% of the student population?

dksuddeth

zero tolerance is a liability issue. If the schools employ zero tolerance, no matter what they stop, they prevented anything from opening them up to lawsuits. It is easier to defend expelling butter knives on campus than to defend giving detention to someone with a broadsword, especially if broadsword boy comes back to do a william wallace.

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The_Jazz

From the liability side of things, dk is esentially right. It doesn't absolutely prevent anything, but it cuts down on the possibility. If the "butterknife" was a "jam spreader", there is no problem. However, it is a knife first and foremost and designed for cutting.

Again, without knowing what the knife looks like, I have to support the school board. If it has a sharp edge or pointed tip, it is a weapon. I have seen some "butterknives" with both and many with neither. Unless and until you know which kind you're talking about, you're making assumptions. And you know what they say about those...

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Plan9

The question is:

How far does the concept of "zero tolerance" erode common sense?

How loose are the definitions? I doubt they have a vagueness doctrine to stop this crap.

Is a spoon a knife in the right light? What about threatening posture? What about things written by students?

...

Lawsuits and CYA and blah-blah-blah aside... where does this garbage stop?

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dreadlock

I'm very glad I'm not still in highschool or I'm sure I'd have been subject to one or more of these obnoxious zero tolerance rules they've put in place. Strange how quickly things change in the course of a decade.