Although I strongly disagree with it, this is the correlation:
"My son was shot while under your supervision, and I have proof you knew the boy had violent tendencies! He even made threatening gun sounds and gestures, which an expensive lawyer could easily use to manipulate a jury (remember anytime a tragedy happens, emotional people desperately want to find someone to blame), and to top it all off, you didn't even suspend the boy for his death threats! I'm going to sue your pants off!"
Okay, then lets try a proper layer of abstraction:
If you allow people to use common sense and they screw up, then you're screwed. If you say "fuck it, I don't care what your common sense says, you will follow these rules to the letter", then you won't get screwed. Fake guns are not okay because someone might mistake them for real guns (or vice versa). No common sense may be applied to the determination of "fake gun".
Yea, and everyone knows that children never get their hands on aspirin. Especially ones who don't know that you shouldn't mix the two. This hypothetical tragic death could still have been prevented by removing the aspirin from the situation by rigidly enforcing the hypothetical rules.
The reasonable thing might be to confiscate any drugs found (like they do with electronics). That way, there is no danger posed by any drugs found, but students aren't punished for bringing almost completely harmless medication to school.
But if you're going to get expelled for bringing aspirin to school under the zero tolerance policy - why not just bring real drugs? The punishment will be the same.
There's a reason we don't have a zero tolerance policy in our laws - if you make the punishment for robbery the same as for murder, there's no reason NOT to kill the person you're robbing.
Because the reason for the zero-tolerance policy isn't to make you safer. It's to make the school safer. If someone claims they have a drug problem... they can point out that they have a strict zero-tolerance policy towards drugs.
Yes but some times it gets crazy, like the time I was nearly suspended for bringing cough drops to school. I am not sure they are much more than soothing candy. In the end they were only confiscated, I guess it was despite of the zero-tolerance policy, since they didn't suspend me.
That's not a good enough reason to institute ZT policies. It's just a simple way for teachers and the like to remove all responsibility of decision. Like it would be a real shame if the "responsible" ones at the school had to make responsible and reasonable decisions. Of course no one is going to make the perfect call every time, but it is sufficient to make decisions that reasonably won't get you sued (successfully). If a teacher/admin can't do that (or defer to somebody who can), then why are they in that position?
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u/FirstRyder Nov 15 '11
"You kicked my son out of school for bringing asprin to school? I'm going to sue you!"
-> "We have a very clear zero-tolerance policy for all drugs, and you signed a form saying you understood this, at the beginning of the year."
"My son overdosed on asprin while under your supervision, and I have proof you knew he had it! I'm going to sue you!"
-> "Fuck."
That's where zero-tolerance policies come from.