My city is an attention whore

Published on 11 Apr 2006 at 11:13 pm.
Filed under Politics.

It looks like Rochester was too entralled with all of the national press that it received over the whole J-Mac debacle. So what do we do? We suspend a student for taking Advil. Hey, it made it onto the main page of Fark!

Is drug abuse a serious problem with some kids? Yes. Is something like this a problem? Probably not. Is the school just trying to cover its own butt? Clearly. Are zero tolerance laws stupid? Yes.

That said, the argument can be made that both the student and the parents knew the rule, so they should not act surprised when it is actually enforced. To this I say “rubbish”! This is definitely bad policy.

I don’t know what saddens me more, the fact that we’re living in a society where schools feel the need to write rules like this to cover for themselves, or that no one fights these rules when they are made. Why do we just sit on our duffs and allow poor rules, or laws, to get made and THEN fight them once they pass? Why not stop them problems before they start?