Zero Tolerance = Zero Intelligence ?

It doesn't take much to do a search where "Zero Tolerance" and "Zero Intelligence" appear very close to each other in published articles. Most of the time, these citations appear in the context of our schools where six-year-olds are suspended for innocent kisses or Eagle Scouts suspended because they accidentally left a rusted Scout knife in their pack or lost in the car trunk.

Today, Kate Fratti takes a look at an issue at a MHS student's freedom of speech rights balanced against the rights of the staff and administrators.

It's a tough call. But then again, aren't ALL of the teenage related decisions tough calls?

Kudos to Dr. Yonson and the rest of the staff. This was apparently a pretty sticky situation with a lot of extenuating circumstances and related baggage that had the potential to turn into an extremely serious situation.

What it really turned out to be was a typical high school student who was unhappy with the teachers, staff, and administration. What a shocking revelation. Even the "Back to the Future" movies caricatured Mr. Strickland the disciplinarian as a disliked high school fixture. How many of us can say we "liked" our high school teachers? (Yes, there were some we liked and respected, but for the most part, I know I thought of them as associate parents and nearly as annoying as the real thing.)

This student took it a step farther and created songs, burned them to CDs and started selling them. Extra credit points for the entrepreneurial spirit, but the execution of the business plan was not well thought out. Real people in the real world get fired when they use their employer's time and resources for personal gain. This was no different except that it was a high schooler who was using the "employer's" resources. Kids are notorious for not thinking things out fully.

It seems like the punishment here is severe but fits the crime. It's a bitter but reasonable ending for their high school career, and the future (college, etc) will not be effected, unless the students lets that happen.

CD stirs up trouble

Should a boy be allowed to write a song critical of adults running his high school and then produce a music CD with that song as its centerpiece?

Should he be allowed to sell said CD to classmates on school grounds? Isn't that the kind of entrepreneurial spirit adults should applaud?

Does your answer change if the CD lyrics are raunchy? What if they aren't just scandalous, but maybe slanderous, too? Like, what if the boy proclaims in lyrics that one administrator has been ... how can I say this delicately, because the singer did not ... uh, physically intimate with another?

Morrisville Superintendent Elizabeth Yonson says the boy had every right to sing what he thinks, and to lay it down on a CD for sale. You don't have to be old to exercise your right of free expression.

You do have to be old to see around corners, though.

The entertainer shot himself in the foot when he violated school policy by allegedly selling the CD on school grounds, even posting fliers that could have potentially exposed the district to liability for slander, Yonson said. What if it could be argued the CD amounted to a school-sponsored project?

The student cinched his undoing by violating another school policy, allegedly loading the CD onto a school computer to play it for other students. He'd signed a contract, as all the kids do, promising the computers would not be used for anything but school work.

His punishment?

The fledgling musician, a senior, has been suspended, and will not be permitted to participate in graduation ceremonies.

The suspension is pretty stiff. The boy will be allowed to complete his senior requirements, but it won't be at Morrisville during the regular school day. He'll likely be invited to do his work at the close of the regular day. His college of choice will not be notified of his recent troubles.

Case closed? Not yet.

Yonson was at a conference in Harrisburg Friday when she got phone calls from the high school telling her lots of kids disagreed with her stand. They planned to walk out of the school in protest of the musician's suspension.
click here!

Kids were informed that any who chose to walk out wouldn't be permitted to participate in sports or any other extracurricular.

“There are proper ways to protest, to have your position heard,” Yonson said. “Walking out of class isn't one of them.” Kids stayed put.

Case closed now?

Not so fast again.

Fueling kids' continued opposition to the musician's suspension, even this week, is by now a well-circulated rumor that another student brought an unloaded gun to school, threatened other kids' safety via a “hit list” on MySpace, but was merely suspended for 10 days.

No fair, kids argued. The musician was being persecuted because he dissed staff, while a kid packing heat got off easy.

Yonson says it's just not true.

Administrators investigated the rumor and found a case of whisper down the lane that reached parents who phoned her. There was no gun in school, administrators found — and no “hit list.”

Yonson did concede that recently a Neshaminy student — who was attending a Bucks County Intermediate Unit support class at Morrisville High — did verbally threaten a classmate. He's been expelled from Morrisville and returned to Neshaminy.

“If he was a Morrisville student, we'd have to deal with him. We don't,” she said.

Some worry the gun rumor was manufactured and fanned by kids close to their music-producing peer who needed an argument to rile other kids.

In the end, the mess had a lot of grownups singing the blues last week — parents, teachers, administrators — all trying to reason with and calm teenagers. No word on whether they'll produce a CD.