Seriousness of purpose in seeking to avert the tragedy of school violence does not necessarily demand rigid adherence to harsh and extreme measures. There are alternatives to politically facile get-tough strategies, the authors point out. THE 1997-98 school year was a shocking and frightening one, filled with reports of seemingly random violence in communities heretofore immune to such incidents. In the wake of these tragedies, we can expect to hear renewed calls for increasingly severe penalties for any kind of school disruption, a stance that has led to the widespread adoption of so-called discipline policies. Already many districts have decreed that making any sort of threat will result in automatic expulsion. Some have gone as far as to suggest that principals be armed in order to deter - or perhaps outshoot - students who bring firearms to school. Such an approach is extreme, to say the least, and is unlikely to be implemented. Yet it is simply the far end of a continuum of responses to what has become the largely unquestioned assumption that school violence is accelerating at an alarming rate and that increasingly draconian disciplinary measures are not only justified but necessary to guarantee school safety. Before we continue down a path that may well turn school principals into town marshals and cafeterias into free-fire zones, however, we would do well to examine more closely the track record of tolerance. What is zero tolerance? What is the nature of the school violence that has brought us to this point? How well does the approach address the serious issues of school safety toward which it has been aimed? The Origins of Zero Tolerance The term zero tolerance - referring to policies that punish all offenses severely, no matter how minor - grew out of state and federal drug enforcement policies in the 1980s. The first use of the term recorded in the Lexis-Nexis national newspaper database was in 1983, when the Navy reassigned 40 submarine crew members for suspected drug abuse. In 1986 was picked up and used by a U.S. attorney in San Diego as the title of a program developed to impound seacraft carrying any amount of drugs. By February 1988 the program had received national attention, and U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese authorized customs officials to seize the boats, automobiles, and passports of anyone crossing the border with even trace amounts of drugs and to charge those individuals in federal court. Zero took hold quickly and within months was being applied to issues as diverse as environmental pollution, trespassing, skateboarding, racial intolerance, homelessness, sexual harassment, and boom boxes. From the outset, the harsh punishments meted out under drug policies engendered considerable controversy. Private citizens whose cars, boats, and even bicycles were impounded for sometimes minute amounts of drugs complained bitterly, and the American Civil Liberties Union considered filing suit against the program. By 1990 the U.S. Customs Service quietly discontinued its initial program after strict applications of the rule resulted in the seizure of two research vessels on which a small amount of marijuana was found. Yet just as the early drug programs in the community were being phased out, the concept was beginning to catch on in the public schools. In late 1989 school districts in Orange County, California, and Louisville, Kentucky, promulgated policies that called for expulsion for possession of drugs or participation in gang-related activity. In New York, Donald Batista, superintendent of the Yonkers public schools, proposed a sweeping program as a way of taking action against students who caused school disruption. With its restricted school access, ban on hats, immediate suspension for any school disruption, and increased use of law enforcement, the program contained many of the elements that have come to characterize approaches in the past decade. …
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 450 citations exist upstream.
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.