The brilliance of zero tolerance: student expelled for butter knife
 

http://www.abcnews4.com/news/stories/1007/465601.html
Zero tolerance is when words on paper make decisions instead of letting people judge what's right. The unjustified paranoia surrounding school violence is absurd, and the mass media are entirely to blame. I don't like to jump to conclusions and assume racism, but I'd put pretty good odds on a guess that the girl is black. It may come out that she has a long disciplinary record, in which case zero tolerance was used as an excuse to get rid of her because teachers didn't want to deal with her but had no real reason to do anything over minor violations.

Anyone who made this decision is an idiot and should be stabbed in the eye with a school-afe #2 pencil along with the idiot who screamed that she was going to stab someone.

1) Non-discretionary enforcement
2) ?
3) The Matrix

..

"Amber Dauge " + "Amber's mother Kristi Heinz" + "Steven Heinz, Amber's father"= married highschooler or typo. Anyway, high school brings back flashbacks of stupid plastic sporks; god it makes me want to stab someone with my butter knife. I wonder how many kids they lost each year before they implemented that in my high school.

Let me get on point, expelling someone over a butter knife is pretty stupid. 0 tolerance policies are also pretty stupid. People can make mistakes and circumstances do matter.

I would think that a sharp pencil or pen would be a better weapon than a butter knife. Are they still allowed in school?

I feel so much safer now that shes off the streets.

This is the same school district that had the local police force run a live fire anti-terrorism drill on the local highschool... without telling anyone at the school?

That's actually the other way around; now that she is not preoccupied and burdened by the confines of a schoolhouse, she is now free to roam the neighborhood, potentially armed and docile.

i remember when i would take my pocket knife to school, occasionally a teacher would see it, but no one seemed to care. But then again, i used it as a tool and it was before all of these violent incidents taking place in schools.

No, that was Burlington Township, NJ. This one did a drug raid with armed officers.

As always remember its one side of a story.

What the story calls a butter knife could be a carving knife and the student may have a history of disciplinary problems.

While I don't trust nanny state legislation, I trust the press to be accurate in this kind of story even less.

so wait: you are defending expelling a student for having a butter knife in her locker, ustwo?

you cannot be serious.

Wow, this story reads like:

"Somebody pull my finger!

I'll release a WMD."

(gets expelled from school)

I agree with Ustwo.

We have one side of the story. We have no picture of the knife. If it is a butter knife, the explusion is ridiculous. If it has a sharp edge, it is not.

The drug case is ... nothing. There are no details, other than one kid had a gun pointed at him. We know of no circumstances other than that.

Show me the knife of describe it, and I'll jump on the bandwagon. Without that, it seems a little premature to take a side.

Any "knife" can be sharp.

Hell, a spoon can be a knife.

Anything can be dangerous.

Zero tolerance is a crock.

Mens rhea over mala prohibita.

These are kids, for fuck's sake.

Speaking of the 14th amendment, isn't this:

a violation of due process. I know schools get some exceptions in certain circumstances, but I don't think they get an out on this. In my high school a kid who phoned in a bomb threat was expelled without even having a hearing. After his parents got a lawyer involved he was allowed to return for precisely that reason. Of course my high school had a due process clause right in the rulebook, maybe that's not the case everywhere?

You need to reread my post.

i did read it, ustwo, and that's why i asked the question.
can we not have this kind of exchange?

couldn't agree more.

You asserted that the butter knife was probably not a butter knife, and only cited that you don't trust "the press". I'd call that an attack on the article as an act of defense of the zero tolerance policy.

I did no such thing.

I said there was a possibility.

Before one gets all outraged about this kind of thing, we need to have more then the families word. I doubt a lot of investigative reporting went into this, there is no comment from the school and there are no witnesses. Just what the family said happened.

If you view that as a defense of the zero tolerance policy, well I can't change how you think, but nothing in my post should lead one to think such a thing unless they assumed that was my position to start which would be erroneous.

If anything that should be clear as I state I don't like nanny state legislation, which I think this is a symptom of, nor do I trust the press on this kind of story.

I'm not sure how that can be confusing. The Jazz knew what I was talking about without effort.

Common sense (oh, no - not that) asserts that a reasonably prudent person would know the difference between a dangerous "dagger-like" implement and a butter knife.

The media is nutso, but they're not nutso towards the tame.

Sure, they said butter knife... they had WANTED to say machete / dagger / dirk / shiv so bad it hurt... but all they had was butter knife.

It was probably a butter knife.

McCarthyism at its greatest.

You missed the "probably" in my post. Please reread.

I don't think the school officials really believe that a butter knife justifies expulsion, I think they're afraid of lawsuits brought by the unjustifiably paranoid. They may worry that granting an exception to the policy (which is probably way too strictly worded or unflexible) this time will result in them having to grant an exception later, when there's a real threat. They may also be worried that in the unlikely event that this girl does eventually hurt someone, some idiot is going to start screaming about how it was preventable and the authorities ignored an incident that was a clear warning of her violent tendencies. It's fear of motivated idiots that seem to drive these decisions more than any legitimate concern for safety.

So now the idea of a potential crime is worse than crime itself?

Shit, I'm moving to Canada.

No they want outrage. Girl suspended for steak knife doesn't sell papers.

They don't care where the outrage is, even if its over BB guns that look like real weapons, or a butter knife. Reporters want that spin.

Everyone that knows what the knife looks like please take one step forward.

That's what I thought.

Nice rush to judgement folks.

Butter knife means a knife that is used to spread butter. They feature a dull edge and rounded point of some kind, as butter does not require a sharp edge to separate or spread. This particular kind of knife is not generally considered dangerous at all. So unless we're assuming that channel 4, which is well respected in the Bay Area, is fabricating facts about stories, it's not unreasonable to understand that they are in fact describing a dull, and generally safe knife.

Not only that, but this story has precedent. In 2005, in Omaha there was a fifth grader who brought a butter knife to school and was suspended due to the zero tolerance policy.
http://www.ketv.com/news/5027982/detail.html
http://www.ketv.com/2005/0927/5028023_240X180.jpg
This is an image of the knife in question for the second story. Notice the dull edge and rounded point, that are characteristics of a butter knife.

students have no rights, or so i've been told dozens of times on this forum.

Anything can be turned into a weapon. So we'll just have all the kiddies go to school nekid, can't have any clothing, belts, shoelaces.....all potential weapons. No pens or pencils.....potential weapons.....remove all metal of any kind which could be fashioned into a weapon......no books either....potential weapons. I'm off to Canada too.....maybe Europe, will the last free American please bring the flag with you when you leave........:sad:

Don't forget cards Dave - I managed to scar a guy with a library card, I was pretending they were ninja stars and threw them at him.

Luckily I was not at school.

zero tolerance policies sound like BS to me but then again at my school about 75% of the population carried a weapon of some kind, we had knife fighs atleast once a month. No one was ever serioualy injured though.

They let you have library cards!?

Those things have edges like butter knives.

...

Damnit, I wanna see this "knife" now. Real bad.

hell, a big enough tub of butter could be a weapon...if you shove someone's face into it and hold them there.


just sayin...

Apparently you missed a story a couple of weeks ago where a table covered with airsoft guns was an "arsenal of machine guns."

She needs to be locked up for life

-Will

You have to be kidding me. A properly sharpened pencil is more dangerous than a butter knife - I've seen someone get stabbed in the hand with a #2. Anything can be used as a weapon, sure, but the butter knife in question wasn't being used as one. Makes no sense.

I think its sad we live in a society that has to fear their own children to the point where "Zero Tolerance" has to be implemented. Ugh people are so afraid and trying to cover their own asses, they'll mess up anyone's life, no matter how young they were

That backs his statement of "The media is nutso, but they're not nutso towards the tame." They don't down play something, they up it. So airsofts become machine guns. Machine guns never become pellet guns though.

If i'm not mistaken students rights are only limited in two circumstances: when the excersizing of said right would 'disrupt the education process' and when it would pose a danger to other students/faculty etc. I fail to see how due process can possibly violate either one of those principles.

Before someone says, that under the policy a butter knife presents a danger to other students, I agree. Under the policy it does present a danger, but that gives them grounds only to suspend her temporarily, I fail to see how she can be expelled without a hearing.

I would like to hear the rest of this story, too bad it's now a day old, and since everyone has already forgotten about it we won't hear anything ever again. Gotta love the 'news'

Geez, I used to carry around a butterfly knife when I was in high school. It was great for cleaning out my fingernails, opening the shrink wrap on my new records, and cleaning out my teeth after a steak or burger. Imagine what I could have done with a butter knife!

Anyhow, I digress. It seems that this "0 tolerance" is a convenient way for the school boards to keep from having to actually think. You know, about intentions, motives, abilities, etc. At least they're focused on educating these kids instead of prosecuting them..... :rolleyes: