Strange Lessons in Discipline

Is it possible for an organization whose employees are sane on an individual level to collectively lose its grip on reality and reason?

It must be. How else can we explain modern public school discipline policies?

Consider the case of Alabama 15-year-old Ysatis Jones. Ms. Jones, apparently suffering menstrual cramps, sought relief by taking an ibuprofen tablet at a school water fountain. Unfortunately for Ms. Jones, she was caught in flagrante de-Motrin by a sharp-eyed teacher. As any normal person would not expect, Ysatis Jones was sentenced by the local school board to a 15 day stint in a correctional education facility. Possession of over-the-counter pain medication is a "major drug offense" in Jefferson County schools, and the district is adamantly defending its decision.

Then there is the act of scholastic treason perpetrated by Thomas Siefert, a junior at Lancaster High School in Ohio. Mr. Siefert had the temerity to satirize Lancaster’s staff on a website created at his own expense and on his own time. For so brazenly exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, Thomas Siefert was expelled through the end of the school year. The district has been threatened with a lawsuit by the ACLU, but as yet shows no sign of backing down.

Here in Michigan, an ACLU lawsuit filed in 2003 was settled out of court last month. The suit was sparked by an incident 13 months ago in which 7 white 8th graders at Bullock Creek Middle School attacked a black 7th grader, kicked him, and whipped him with a belt, all while shouting "KKK," for Ku Klux Klan. The attackers were suspended but, according to press reports, at least one of them was already back at school and taunting the black student with racial slurs the following week.

Norman Donker, the county prosecutor, told reporters that teachers had overheard the victim and his attackers trash talking each other in the language of street thugs on previous occasions, but that "no one put a stop to it" when it first started.

Though he condemned the beating, Bullock Creek Middle School principal Craig Carmoney said "there are two sides to the story." Two sides to a racist seven-on-one gang beating? What does that even mean? What could the attacker’s side of the story possibly look like that would even begin to mitigate such an outrage? Carmoney didn’t elaborate.

To settle the ACLU lawsuit, Bullock Creek School District agreed to offer its staff "diversity training."

So our table of crime and punishment looks like this: ...

[Read the conclusion of this commentary on the
Mackinac Center website.]