You know the public school system is in trouble when a kindergartener is suspended for talking about her Hello Kitty bubble blower gun.Does any one remember what it was like to fly in olden times … before 9/11? In the good old days before TSA screeners patted you down in places only your spouse is allowed to touch?
Before your hands would be routinely checked for bomb residue prior to boarding about a third of the time (even though your profile is pleasant-enough, middle-aged, American-born woman of Irish-German ancestry)?
Before they could confiscate a new and ridiculously expensive bottle of Chanel No. 5 from out of your suitcase when the rental car shuttle got you back to the terminal too late to check the bag? Yeah, I’m still bitter about that.
Well, the TSA has nothing on what school authorities have been doing since the massacre at Columbine High. All over the country, they seem to have adopted a Zero Tolerance policy that results in suspensions and expulsions of kids between the ages of 5 and 17 for having guns, “lookalike guns,” and things that are classified as “other weapons” by officialdom. Maybe that should be spelled “officialdumb.”
No, I’m not defending the presence of actual guns or actual or potential weapons on school premises—at least not in the hands of kids.
But when a 7-year-old boy from Brooklyn Park, MD nibbles his Pop-Tart during “school breakfast time” into the shape of a handgun—and innocently shows it off, saying “Look, I made a gun!”—it’s a safe bet that (1) no one could mistake the pastry for an actual gun or even a gun lookalike, and (2) no one was at risk of death or bodily injury from the Pop-Tart.
A two-day suspension was only the beginning of this fiasco, however. That afternoon, the school sent a letter home to all parents reminding them of the Code of Student Conduct with its manifold crimes and punishments spelled out, and offered counseling to children who may have been “troubled” by “today’s incident.” Parents were told to “help [their children] share their feelings,” but if the parents felt inadequate to the task of quelling their child’s terrors over the Pop-Tart gun incident, “Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week.”
Although the letter intimates that little Josh was suspended for disrupting “the class” (breakfast class?!?) when he “used food to make inappropriate gestures,” a two-day suspension means that he committed a “Level 3” violation, implying the use of an “other weapon” of sorts. According to the Code, “other weapons” are defined as follows:
So, clearly, Pop-Tart guns and croissant guns and Danish guns or others fashioned from pastries fall outside the prohibited items. Case closed.
No. Not closed. Josh’s parents sued to have his penal record expunged, only to have the charges broadened, as his teacher now vilified him as a trouble-maker.
And it didn’t end there. Last month in a 30-page opinion, Hearing Examiner Andrew W. Nussbaum recommended that the County School Board uphold the suspension and refuse to expunge Josh’s school record. So we’ll have to wait for the Board’s decision, but it’s not looking good for Josh.
A wacky isolated case, you think? I’ve randomly selected a batch of Zero Tolerance school suspensions that run the entire gamut from simply ludicrous to you-have-to-be-making-this-up.
We’ll start with the easiest cases. Possessing things that look like guns or weapons only if you are, say, two years old and have never seen an actual gun or weapon.
Weapon “Look-alikes”
1. Sumter County, SC: A 6-year-old kindergartener brought her brother’s clear plastic toy gun to show and tell. Naomi was expelled from school and barred from trespassing on school grounds or attending any school-related events, subject to criminal charges if she was caught trespassing. Her parents had to drop off and pick up siblings at a distance from school grounds when she was with them in the car. Although the superintendent and school board upheld the decision, after a public outcry (it was in South Carolina after all), the superintendent reversed his decision.
2. A 12-year-old boy from Coventry, RI was suspended for three days after a small (2”) keychain “gun” he won as a prize at a fair fell out of his backpack and was picked up by a friend who showed it around. His parents have filed an appeal to have his record expunged so he can maintain his perfect attendance record.
3. A 6-year-old boy from Palmer, MA had a Lego GI Joe gun (a little larger than a quarter) on the school bus. He was given detention, threatened with suspension and had to write a letter of apology to the bus driver who said that “he caused quite a disturbance and that the children were traumatized.” Fortunately, the onboard camera revealed no disturbance or trauma, and the principal reversed her decision the following week. He was, however, the 3rd kindergartener in Massachusetts in four months to be trapped by the Zero Tolerance policy.
Banned “weapons” no one could ever mistake for weapons
4. Hyannis, MA: A 5-year-old kindergartener in an afterschool program, made a “gun” out of Lego blocks. He then ran around the playroom, pointing it and making shooting sounds. The principal threatened him with suspension, reportedly telling his mother: “it’s a threat to other children and other children could have been scared.” Nyeh. I think 5-year-olds can recognize that sometimes a Lego-brick gun is just, you know, Legos.
5. A 13-year-old NJ boy was twirling a pencil in his math class when a nearby classmate (who’d been bullying him) yelled, “He’s making gun motions. Send him to juvie.” The school superintendent defended his actions suspending the pencil-twirler, explaining that they must investigate whenever a student feels uncomfortable or threatened. “We never know what’s percolating in the minds of children,” he reportedly told a news station. The boy’s father said his son had to undergo a 5-hour examination. His son “was stripped, had to give blood samples (which caused him to pass out) and urine samples for of all things drug testing. Then four hours later a social worker spoke to him for five minutes and cleared him.”
6. A 2nd grader in Virginia was suspended for pointing his pencil like a gun and making “gun noises” at a classmate who was doing the same to him. He later explained to his dad “I was being a Marine [like his dad] and the other guy was being a bad guy.” A school spokesman defended the suspension, saying: “a pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made.” One can hardly expect the boys to make pencil noises, can one?
7. An 8-year-old boy and his friend from Harmony, FL were suspended for using their fingers like guns while playing cops and robbers in the playground. The parents were told that the “gesture was an act of violence.”
8. To the principal of Devonshire Alternative Middle School (OH), a 10-year-old boy committed a “level 2 lookalike firearm” violation by pointing his finger at a friend’s head and saying “boom.” A hearing officer upheld the suspension but was willing to reduce the charges to a “volatile act.” By the way, the headline of the linked article nicely captures the idiocy: “Boy Suspended for Bringing Own Hand to School.”
9. A 10-year-old 5th grader in Pennsylvania was suspended AND FACED EXPULSION for pretending to shoot an imaginary arrow (á la “Hunger Games”) back at a school friend who’d just held up his folder like a gun, pretending to shoot the, umm, archer. A letter from the principal stated that the school’s code of conduct prohibits weapons, “replicas” or “look-alike” weapons” and requires that an expulsion process be started and the police notified. I suppose the boy is fortunate that they didn’t confiscate “his bow and arrow.”
10. A 2nd-grader in Ohio was suspended for 2 days for drawing a gun on paper, cutting out the drawing and pointing it at classmates. Fortunately, no one was injured in the rampage.
When a gun or weapons violation doesn’t even require a physical reality like a finger. When the mere utterance of the word “gun” is enough. (The word was made steel and looked like a Glock.)
11. While waiting for the bus after school, a 5-year-old girl in PA chatted with a friend about what fun it would be to shoot each other with her pink Hello Kitty bubble blower gun (a toy that emits soapy bubbles when the “trigger” is pulled). She was suspended for making a “terroristic threat” (Have these people ever heard of al-Qaeda?) and her playmate was identified as “the victim.” She was also required to undergo a psychological examination and, luckily, found to be a perfectly normal 5-year-old “with positive peer relationships.”
12. A Maryland 11-year-old was ordered suspended from school for ten days “after telling other students [on the school bus] that he wished he’d had a gun to protect the students who were killed in the Sandy Hook massacre.” The principal explained to the boy’s father that “if you say the word ’gun’ in my school, you are going to get suspended for 10 days.” Because it occurred just before “winter” break, the suspension was reduced to one day. However, the parents were ordered to complete a 4-page questionnaire, which the dad described as ”intrusive” as a condition of his son’s being able to return to school after the break. Questions included the mental health of family members and how many guns and weapons the family owned. The deputy sheriff tried to search their home "for guns and weapons" and became agitated when the dad asked him to come back with a search warrant.
The final two examples defy categorization
13. Hunter, a 3-year-old deaf child from Grand Island, Nebraska, learned to sign his name at 6 months, using a type of American Sign Language (ASL) called S.E.E. (Signing Exact English), in which his fingers look vaguely as if he’s forming a gun with them when he signs his name. His parents went ballistic when he started school and teachers asked that he use a different sign for his name. The school board’s “Weapons in Schools” policy prohibits “any instrument … that looks like a weapon.” Anyone who thinks the fingers of a toddler resemble a weapon-like instrument really needs to get out of teaching. The school later denied that it wanted his name to be signed in the less-weapon-resembling ASL sign.
14. Two 7th-grade students in VA were suspended for an entire school year for playing with Zombie Hunter airsoft guns … NOT in school, NOT on a school bus or even at a school bus stop. They were in the front yard of one of the boys, about 70 yards from the school bus stop. A neighbor (possibly a zombie?) who said she “felt uncomfortable to see a boy pointing a [Zombie Hunter] gun,” called 911 to report the incident. The boy’s school record now states he was suspended for “possession of a firearm.”
All I can add is that if Zero Tolerance had been in effect when we were raising our kids, including four sons (now ages 26 to 37), they might still be serving suspensions. I gave up on my No Guns Allowed policy when the older two, then 7 and 5, repeatedly aimed their precision teeth-carved pistol-shaped sandwiches at each other. Toy soldiers, GI Joe and Star Wars action figures, Nerf guns, cowboy-style 6-shooters, cap guns (love that aroma!), and later, even a spud gun and paintball guns were all part of growing up. And today, not one of them is a thug.
Susan E. Wills is Spirituality Editor of Aleteia’s English edition.
