The model student who was disciplined for having drill team props in her car is an easy poster child for the woes of zero tolerance.
There is no defending a policy that would punish Marie Morrow, a Cherokee Trail High School senior, for leaving fake rifles in her car.
The 17-year-old, an accomplished student who wants to join the Merchant Marines, was caught in a zero tolerance web that was spun at least partly in the tense days following the Columbine High School massacre.
It’s clear the statute that forced Cherry Creek Schools to boot her out of school — even for just six days — ought to be modified.
The difficulty comes in giving over something that legislators are loath to extend — the ability to exercise judgment.
School administrators, who are on the front lines of school security every day, must have flexibility when it comes to determining who to punish and just how harshly.
We should trust those who run our schools to make distinctions between an exemplary student who belongs to a drill team and an angry loner who is plotting to kill or intimidate.
Intent matters in these situations, and Colorado law ought to allow discretion on the part of school administrators. If school authorities prove themselves incapable of making good decisions, they ought to be transferred or fired.
We also need to note how this situation came to light. Kids saw and told. That’s how it should work.
Students almost always know when something’s afoot and frequently are the first to see and hear things that administrators need to know about.
A landmark study by the Secret Service found that in three-quarters of school violence incidents, the attacker told a friend, schoolmate or sibling about his or her plans beforehand. And, the study found, they had easy access to guns.
So the young folks who spotted rifles in the back of Morrow’s car absolutely did the right thing when they raised alarms.
It’s up to administrators to behave responsibly with such information.
Did they in this case? The law says any student who brings a dangerous weapon onto schools grounds must be expelled. One of the definitions of a dangerous weapon is a “firearm facsimile that could reasonably be mistaken for an actual firearm.”
Could Morrow’s drill team props be mistaken for real guns? They don’t look real to us, especially the one wrapped in duct tape. And the fact that Morrow is commander of the Douglas County Young Marines drill team should have provided a clue.
It seems to us that school administrators engaged in an overly paranoid reading of the law. Be that as it may, the statute ought to make a distinction between the mere presence of fake guns, and fake guns used in a threatening manner.
Intent counts, and those who run our schools ought to be able to use the good judgment we pay them to exercise each and every day to discern between real threats and innocent victims of circumstance.
