By JJ Bowman
News Editor
We live in an era where tolerance reigns as never before. It wasn’t long ago when women had no place in the workforce, minorities had no place at drinking fountains and homosexuals had no place out of the closet.
But now when one has a problem accepting the presence of other people, a little lesson in tolerance training takes the Archie Bunker right out of them.
The only level of non-tolerance that seems acceptable today is zero tolerance. Take, for instance, the zero-tolerance craze that swept the nation after the school shootings at Columbine. After two maniacs – no wait, that was intolerant of me. After two poor, misguided boys reacted in a violent manner to years of abuse from their peers, schools around the country began adopting zero-tolerance policies.
On its face it sounds like a good policy. Two boys walk into a school and start shooting, but if we were only able to get rid of all mentions and representations of guns and violence, such extreme outbursts could be avoided. Although we have no evidence to suggest that lives have been saved with this policy in schools, the Wall Street Journal has kept a log of when zero tolerance crosses the line into absurdity.
According to the Journal, a fourth-grader went to school in a duck-hunting outfit to celebrate his school’s “Camouflage Day.” After a shotgun shell from a hunting expedition with his family was found in his coat pocket, the 9-year-old boy was suspended from his North Carolina school for five days.
Another student was expelled from his high school for having a three-and-a-half-inch knife in his Jeep. The senior said he did not know the knife was in his car, but when his case reached the school board the committee had no other choice but to expel him in compliance with Michigan’s zero-tolerance policy.
Of course, we needn’t look farther than our local supermarket to see that zero tolerance has run amok. As nearly everyone on campus now knows, two of Ralphs most recognizable figures, Harry McDermott and Nancy Cicatelli, lost their jobs after neglecting to ask two underage Pepperdine students for identification. Ralphs, in an attempt to show its commitment to the laws of our land, has a strict policy that demands anyone who fails to card a customer can expect to lose their job, case closed.
Because of zero tolerance, Ralphs had no wiggle room. Even though Harry and Nancy were excellent at their jobs, had more than 30 years experience to back it up and had earned Jack-in-the-Box guy status as some of the most recognizable members of the Malibu service community, they had to go.
Pepperdine, fortunately, takes a much more sane approach to discipline. If you read the student handbook, you will notice that nearly every infraction in which a student can partake (drug dealing being one exception) can result in a wide variety of disciplinary measures, depending on the specific situation of each student.
Sure, this policy might make more work for Dean of Student Affairs Dr. Mark Davis, Judicial Administrator Dr. Sharon Beard and all other people on disciplinary committees, but it also makes for more just outcomes than anyone can find with a zero-tolerance policy. Let’s not be lazy and stand for zero tolerance.
January 16, 2003