An athletic and academic standout in Lee County said a lunchbox mix-up has cut short her senior year of high school and might hurt her college opportunities.
Ashley Smithwick, 17, of Sanford, was suspended from Southern Lee High School in October after school personnel found a small paring knife in her lunchbox.
via Lunchbox mix-up leads to charges for Sanford teen :: WRAL.com.
According to Ashley and her father, the two have matching lunchboxes and Ashley took her father’s to school by mistake. Her father uses a small paring knife to cut up his apple at lunch. Now Ashley has been kicked out of school, charged with possession of a dangerous weapon on school grounds, and is having to complete her high school coursework online.
This sort of “no tolerance” mindset is a complete abdication of the need to make responsible, reasonable decisions based on circumstances. The School principal and superintendent here should be fired immediately, and this girl should sue the state school system.
11 users commented in " A confederacy of dunces… "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackAgree withe everything but the suit
I don’t normally suggest lawsuits. But lawsuits have their place. And one of those places is in putting risk in doing stupid, damaging things like this. In this case I fully support the idea of a lawsuit just so other principals and superintendents get the fear of god put into them for making such idiotic decisions.
Addendum:
I’m ok with her suing to be readmitted, of course. Although, that would probably take so long to resolve it’d be moot anyway.
Meh, she’s better off without them anyway…
You have to wonder, what kind of idiot puts idiots like this in charge of such decisions…
Man I’m really going to set some things straight once I’m made dictator for life!
Heh. It all depends on whose ox is being gored, I guess…
Rather than Knee-Jerk this, let’s look at it rationally (points to title of Blog…)
1) Unless you are in favor of allowing knives in students’ possession in school, you have to have SOME policy against them.
2) ANY policy which isn’t blindly and evenly applied EVERY TIME against EVERY PERSON in EVERY SITUATION subjects the school to lawsuit, whether it’s on the basis of (pick your poision – race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion) or just because in THIS time, as it relates to THIS person, under THESE circumstances, the policy shouldn’t apply (which, of course, opens the door to even FURTHER lawsuits…)
3) So, if you support a policy of not allowing kids to bring (guns, knives, drugs, pick your contraband) to school, then the ONLY sane policy (from a “please don’t break us by suing us viewpoint) IS a “zero tolerance” policy – equally applied to every person every time in every circumstance.
In this case, BECAUSE there’s a policy which is equally applied to every person in every circumstance and the policy is a reasonable and rational one (i.e., not to allow knives in the possession of students) then there is NO CASE against the school and any sane judge (gotta qualify that) will dismiss any lawsuit on a Motion for Summary Judgment.
If not, then the next time a student is found with a bazooka, he’ll claim that he “didn’t know” it was (in his backpack, down his pants, in his lunchbox – whatever) because, in its essence, that’s this girl’s defense — she “didn’t know it was there.”
So, in this instance the “didn’t know it was there” defense can’t be allowed so that in the next (dozen? hundred? thousand?) case(s) that defense won’t be allowed EITHER.
(Oh, and just for the record…”honor students” go berserk too:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/12/48hours/main611470.shtml
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22honor+student+kills%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a (or do your own search…)
No.
The way to handle these types of situations requires out of the box thinking.
First, have a “zero tolerance” policy as above. Every student, every time is expelled when found with prohibited contraband.
Second, each student can apply to re-admission, but NOT to the administration of the school from which they were expelled, rather to a “jury” of PARENTS (drawn from the PTA?) who, on an individual basis decide whether THIS student in THIS situation should be absolved and allowed back into school.
Third, that “jury” would be anonymous and granted absolute immunity from suit.
That would solve much of the issue…
Fair enough Drax. In the comments of the story somebody posted that the daughter and father did not follow the appeal process, instead deciding to go to the newspaper and make it a public lynching of the principal and superintendent. I suppose there are always two sides to a story…
“…with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.”
… and god knows, we hate bad taste!
My third son (an honor student in elementary school) was expelled for carrying a pocket knife to school when he was in the 5th grade.
His story was that he wanted to show his friend his new knife. He was to meet him at the catwalk, show it to him, come back home, leave it here, and then go on to school. But, the friend got there too late for Phil to get all that done and be back at school on time.
Expelled!
His teachers, and the Asst. Principal were mortified, because he was “one of those kids” that you REALLY want at school.
The Parish had a procedure for appealing. We went through it with him, and he had to honestly lay out “why, how, and what the hell he was thinking.” Two administrators listened to him, thoroughly chastised him, and let him back in school.
Of course, he was just in the 5th grade, and had a spotless behavior record. It probably would have been different if he’d been in high school. They’re pretty tough about zero tolerance. Man, things are different now. I well remember shotguns in pickup truck racks, and I always had a pocket knife from elementary school on.
Even as recently as the mid-90s when we were living in rural SW Colorado, I’d see the high school boys with shotgun racks in their trucks at the school yard. Then came Columbine.
I used to carry a Buck knife to school with me, it has a five inch blade and I’ve used it to skin and dress deer in the field. I also on occasion kept my .22 in my trunk, even in high school. I once gave a speech on sharpening a knife in high school.
I say let kids carry knives to school.
Yours,
Tom
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