“I know I made a really stupid decision but I don’t think I should be expelled for it.”…. Amber Dauge says that stupid decision was taking a butter knife to school. Amber ran out of the house to meet the bus while making a sandwich. When she realized she had the knife, she put it in her bookbag..then put it in her locker at Goose creek High school. She forgot it was there…until a few weeks later ..when the knife fell out of her overstuffed locker…. “A kid behind me yelled out a comment that I was going to stab someone with the knife and everyone started laughing and the teacher saw it”, Amber told us. The teacher told the principal and Amber was suspended and recommended for expulsion.
How (&^%$#@ stupid is this? A student makes an honest mistake, by all indications with no malicious or destructive intent…and she gets expelled. Yes, kids…truly we adults have collectively taken leave of our senses. When did perspective and proportion leave the arena? Hey, 9.11 changed everything…or have you forgotten??
I’m sick to death of “zero tolerance” being a metaphor for “zero common sense”. If Amber Dauge had brought the knife to school with the intent of creating havoc and doing harm, that would be one thing, but who would use a butter knife to kill and/or maim? It simply defies anything resembling conventional logic to assume that a butter knife in the hands of a high school student is the gateway to a mass-casualty event a la Columbine.
If a high school is truly to be considered an educational institution, then what sort of lessons are children to learn with adult administrators throw common sense out the window? That in terms of deadly force, a butter knife is no different from a cache of weapons and explosives? That a butter knife, which honestly is really a threat only to a sandwich or an English muffin, in the hand of a properly motivated female student can also be an instrument of mass murder? Jeebus, have we completely lost our (&^%$#@ minds?
Don’t make me answer that….
While I understand the need to ensure the safety of our children, reacting out of panic and righteous anger is no way to handle this issue. “Zero tolerance”, perhaps…but does that mean that we must check our common sense at the door? Use some judgement. Evaluate the situation. Determine if the action of a student REALLY presents a material risk to the safety of her fellow students. But expelling a student for making a stupid decision- something teenagers are wont to do? Who’s the real threat here?
Sometimes I wonder if it’s not true that those who can teach and those who can’t become administrators. It would also seem that becoming an administrator means putting your common sense into a blind trust. Amber Dauge may have deserved punishment, but at least let that punishment fit the crime. Expelling her for mistakenly bringing a butter knife to school seems a bit like using an IED to swat a mosquito- you may kill the mosquito, but the collateral damage will be truly epic.
In the meantime, perhaps Berkeley Country (and schools all over the country) ought to give some serious thought to hiring administrators who can employ a modicum of common sense when those around them are overreacting and acting as if a teenager who made a stupid decision is a budding serial killer.
