More "zero tolerance" fascism

When you're talking about the "zero tolerance" Gestapo that fills America's schools, it seems like every story is more outrageous than the last. And these new stories have to be among the most mind-boggling yet.

This set of outrages stretches back a couple years. But they weren't widely reported until now.

A year ago, a teenage girl in Brockton, Massachusetts, was handcuffed and arrested at school for a dress code violation. You read that right: Arrested. For a dress code violation, of all things! She was wearing a t-shirt featuring a picture of a boyfriend who had been killed in a shooting.

What was the student charged with? "Causing a disturbance." A shirt caused a disturbance?

Massachusetts state law prohibits public schools from even having a dress code, so the school was violating the law by even enforcing such a policy at all. (State law says schools may not "abridge the rights of students as to personal dress and appearance.")

In Texas not long ago, a 14-year-old girl was sentenced to 7 years in prison for allegedly pushing a hall monitor. (The monitor had threatened her - and several students said the monitor had shoved her first.)

This is part of a trend of America's prison-like schools delegating discipline to police, the court system, and corrections facilities. It's part of a whole system that benefits the corrections industry and weeds out dissenters and small-time troublemakers.

Of course, the major troublemakers have gotten away with more and more. Everyone knows that if some spoiled brat was expelled for bullying, the bully would be defended to the death by the same people who support imprisoning students over a dress code violation. Count on that.

Now there's another incident, this one in the right-wing public schools of Winchendon, Massachusetts.

An elementary school student was suspended for 5 days because he took a souvenir rifle casing to school. The casing was not live ammo. It was an empty brass casing from a blank (not even from a real bullet), and it was given to him by a veteran during a Memorial Day festival.

If a vet presents an empty casing to a youngster during a festival, how can it possibly be dangerous? Anybody could have seen that it was not a live weapon. Scissors used daily in schools are far more dangerous than this casing was.

It gets worse. For starts, the school said it's keeping the casing and not returning it. That's commonly known as theft. For another, the school is also threatening to assign a probation officer to the boy.

For what??? They're going to assign a probation officer without even making sure he's guilty of a crime? He's only in 4th grade, for crying out loud!

Come on, lawsuits, where are you? With everyone cowed into not taking action against schools, there's little accountability for schools now. Maybe if schools knew they'd be sued, this shit would stop.

(Source: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/28/9244;
http://www.telegram.com/article/20080529/NEWS/805290859/1116)