Doodle on a desk as a kid? Be glad you didn’t get arrested

Alexa Gonzalez, a 12-year-old girl, was arrested at the junior high school in Forest Hills, N.Y., for doodling on her desk. There was no offensive material, just a simple note: "I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)."

Doodling seems like a fairly harmless activity. Granted, damaging school property can become a big problem, so a fine would not have seemed far out of line. However, Gonzalez was handcuffed in front of her class, and then escorted to the police precinct.

"They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn't believe it," Gonzalez said in a New York Times article. "I didn't want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I'm a bad person."

Zero tolerance policies in schools give police free reign over any and all minor offenses. The idea is to create a safer environment for students by cracking down on violence and drug prevalence in schools.

Supporters of zero tolerance argue that the policy creates environments that are appropriate for children and strengthens respect for authority in schools. However, overzealous acts like the arrest of Gonzalez call into question the soundness of zero tolerance policies. There is also emerging evidence suggesting that zero tolerance creates so much fear among students that they are no longer reporting offenses because of the possible implications and potential loss of relationships stemming from the extreme procedures.

Gonzalez's case is merely the latest in a series of ridiculous arrests in schools throughout the United States. In 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Frasier was handcuffed for writing "Okay" on her desk. In addition, several more students were arrested that same day for putting stickers on the walls. In November, a food fight at a middle school in Chicago resulted in the arrests of 25 children, some as young as 11, according to the Chicago Police Department.

Zero tolerance is failing all over the country. In California, it is common practice to ticket students for being tardy. At first glance, this does not seem all that terrible of a policy. In fact, I can see the logic behind this – ticket a student for being late and they quickly learn not to be late again. The problem is that the ticket prices are so high – $250 for repeat offenders – that instead of being on time, school attendance is dropping dramatically because children opt to not even come to class.

However, at Highland High School in Palmdale, Calif., zero tolerance for tardiness is producing results. The issuing of tardiness tickets drastically cut the number of pupils coming late to class and helped tone down disruptive behavior. Perhaps this is because the fifth ticket issued lands a student in juvenile traffic court.

Opponents of zero tolerance criticize the extreme measure enacted in New York. As of 1998, school security officers were placed under the authority of the NYPD. Today, there are nearly 5,000 employees in the NYPD School Safety Division. Meanwhile, there are only 3,000 counselors available to the New York City public school system.

"If they have been suspended once, their likelihood of being pushed out of the school increases," Donna Lieberman, an attorney with the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in the New York Times article. "They may end up in jail at some point in their life."

Studies from January 2010 by the Advancement Project, a legal action group, indicate that the time an expelled child spends away from the classroom will increase the likelihood that the child will not only drop out of school but eventually end up in the criminal justice system – exactly what zero tolerance is supposedly trying to prevent.

In Clayton County, Ga., juvenile court judge Steven Teske is working to reshape zero tolerance policies in schools by making them a last resort. In 2003, he created a program in Clayton County schools that distinguishes felonies from misdemeanors. The result in the number of students detained by the school fell by 83 percent and the number of weapons detected on campus declined by 73 percent.

Last week, after hearing about 12-year-old Gonzalez's arrest in New York, he wasn't shocked.

"There is zero intelligence when you start applying zero tolerance across the board," he said. "Stupid and ridiculous things start happening."

Nicole Smith ‘10 (smithn@stolaf.edu) is from Green Oaks, Ill. She majors in English with a concentration in media studies.