best of myshortpencil

District will investigate handling of hat incident
Dave Seibert / The Arizona
Republic
Originally posted March
17, 2004

The Scottsdale Unified School District is also planning to investigate whether
school officials and a police officer acted appropriately when the
17-year-old was arrested at school after he refused to turn his baseball hat
from the side to the front.

Listen
up parents. Schools are applying the student dress code to adults when they are
on campus. See, e.g., School
Dislikes Parent’s Hair Coloring. That means if you wear your hat sideways,
you should be prepared to adjust it or be arrested!

"I think it’s important that we look into this and find out what we need to
know and move forward," district spokesman Tom Herrmann said.

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Morgan’s original three-day suspension for the March 5 incident began
Monday, the day students returned from spring break.

The teen’s mother, Bobbie Morgan, said she talked to school principals early
Monday in hopes of getting her son back in school immediately. She said she
was told he could return but would have to spend half his lunch hour cleaning
the cafeteria for 10 days.

She declined. "Hasn’t he suffered enough?" she asked.

Exactly
right. In fact, if it were my child, I’d tell the district he wouldn’t be
returning to school until two days after the suspension had run because he would
be visiting a psychologist about his anguish over being suspended for 3 days for
wearing his hat sideways!

Later Monday she, Morgan, Morgan’s grandmother and another Saguaro parent and
son met with top school officials in a closed two-hour meeting where the
suspension was reduced.

Scottsdale police said they arrested the teen because the officer worried that
the situation might escalate.

Morgan was jailed for several hours on suspicion of disorderly conduct,
failure to obey a police officer, trespassing and interfering or disrupting an
educational institution.

For
wearing a hat sideways? A round of Alice’s
Restaurant, anyone? Good thing he wasn’t littering.

Bobbie Morgan wants the school district to ask police not to pursue charges.

"I want them to stand in Marlon’s corner, too," she said. "I
placed him in their care."

School security guards asked Morgan to turn his hat around. It is against
school policy to wear hats sideways. Morgan, who is Black, said the rule is
selectively enforced. He refused to turn his hat and refused to go to the
office.

Do
schools really need mandatory rules about which direction to point the bill of a
cap? This calls for the invention of caps with two bills. That way school
officials won’t know if they are coming or going, which will probably cause them
to double the period of suspension.

Morgan said Monday that if he had to do it all over again, "I probably
would have just went to the office and just settled it another way."

WTOC TV (Savannah, Georgia)
Originally posted March 16, 2004.

Has school drug enforcement gone too far? A Savannah mother thinks so after her
16-year-old son got suspended. Police say their drug dog smelled marijuana and
cocaine on his backpack. It all started with a routine drug check at Jenkins
High School yesterday morning. It ended with student Renard Powers getting
suspended, based only on a smell. His mother says he is a victim of an
overzealous school drug policy.

Renard is your typical 16-year-old. A "B" student, he’s in school
chorus, and spends most of his free time on his computer. When Jenkins High
campus police called his name for a random drug check, he didn’t think twice.
"They searched our classroom, lined us up outside in the hallway, and had
us empty our pockets," he recalled.

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Then, the police dog started sniffing his backpack. "They told me my bag
smelled like marijuana and cocaine," Renard said.

"This was something that was just bogus," said Renard’s mom, Lanore
Smith. She says her son has never had a problem in school. "They can check
his record. He is a good kid."

When police searched Renard’s bag, they found some books and papers, all the
normal stuff a kid who goes to school would have. They did not find any drugs
but suspended Renard and charged him with passive participation. The school
calls it part of its zero-tolerance policy. "Students and parents need to
understand that," said school board spokesman James Harvey.

Whistling
past the graveyard.

Harvey says the schools trust the judgment of the police and school
administrators. "They are the professionals, doing this a long time,"
he said. "These are people we trust."

So
why don’t these trustworthy people realize that the backpack could have become
contaminated with scent of drugs, if
accurately detected by the dog, entirely innocently? The student’s backpack
wasn’t continuously under his control. Another student, or even
an administrator could have accidentally or intentionally exposed the
backpack to the scent of drugs. Or the scent may have been picked up at an
out-of-school event. Who knows?

"They’re professionals," agreed Smith, "but I’ve seen those dogs
screw up, lots of times."

She and Renard hope the school will reevaluate its decision. "I don’t want
it following him," she said. "He wants to go to college. He wants to
do things."

"I’m just confused, cause I’m getting accused of something I didn’t
do," said Renard.

That’s
because system needs trump student needs. If the district lets you off then it
will have to fight over whether other students should be let off, too. It
doesn’t have time for justice or fairness. It’s exactly this kind of thing that
makes students think about getting revenge.

The first thing Renard says he will be doing is getting a new backpack. His mom
plans on fighting the suspension, even if it means getting a lawyer. She hopes
to meet with school officials today to clear Renard’s name and record.