Eugene Volokh points us to an case where a 12-year-old boy received a three-day suspension for bringing a copy of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition to school and sharing it with his friends. Supposedly it violated the school's 'non-verbal' harassment policy.
What a load of bollocks! Have we really become such a bunch of ninnies that we can't understand that 12-year-old boys will tend to want to look at this sort of thing? If it's a distraction to education, then maybe the school would be justified in confiscating it and returning it after school. I recall that we used to cut the pictures out of the swimsuit issue and put them inside our lockers. I guess that would make us criminals today, but we somehow managed to turn out OK.
This sort of thing bothers me because the punishment is way too harsh for the so-called infraction. Further, it reinforces the idea among the kinds that the 'authorities' are a bunch of idiots.
Posted by Aubrey at February 26, 2004 10:19 AM | TrackBackIt could easily have been worse for the kid. I'm sure that if he was passing around a copy of Guns and Ammo he would have been expelled - after being arrested for theatening antisocial behavior toward the school.
Overlawyered.com tracked cases like this under "zero tolerance" for a while, but I think they became so common he gave up. Kindergartners called on the carpet for "sexual harrassment?" Arresting a "drug dealer" of seven for giving a mentholated lemon cough drop to a friend? A week suspension for a kid drawing a picture of his dad, serving in Afghanistan, carrying a rifle?