Boy Who Found Lighter Suspended From NJ School

[TechMan]

Boy, who is a boy scout, finds lighter on way to school.
Somehow school officials find out about lighter and call police on boy because said officials consider a lighter a weapon and ''has the potential to cause harm.''     
Police chief Barney Fife believes that the school took appropriate action.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/23/us/AP-US-Lighter-Suspension.html?_r=2


Wow the idiocy will never cease will it?  Heck when I was in high school I always had a pocket knife on me and the teachers knew.  I also worked on the stage during a study hall period and would make my own hall pass which usually was a crow bar.  My how times have changed.

[dogmush]

Anything that has "the potential to cause harm" is now a weapon? 

Wanna see a magic trick?

That'll put a crimp on school.

And that's not even counting all the potental harm a teacher can cause.  We'd better ban them from school posthaste.

[AJ Dual]

What I never understood in the notion of a "Zero Tolerance Policy" is how giving a good kid a pass who has a lighter or a kitchen knife for his apple or whatever, somehow makes it impossible to punish the bad kid who had the same, but past experience, or the context of the discovery of the item makes it clear he didn't have innocent intentions?

Was there a flood of cases where juvi delinquents were getting off the hook because they could point out the valedictorian had a paring knife in her lunch bag for some fruit?

It does not seem to be a problem in the "real world" in terms of criminal and civil process.

[taurusowner]

Zero Tolerance allows them to pass all blame onto "the system".  Now whenever some precious snowflake really does something wrong, and the helicopter parents complain, the administrators can just point to the rules and say "We had to do it, we have to do it to everyone", instead of having some backbone and justly punishing the delinquents and standing by the decision.

[zahc]

Public schools are basically prisons. Same general thing.

[Perd Hapley]

So someone hung a lighter from a school, and this kid found it?   

[griz]

From the article:

But the 11-year-old boy's father questioned why school officials consider the lighter a weapon.

Patrick Halpin called police Wednesday to say there were weapons on school property because teachers at the Grace Breckwedel Middle School had lighters in the building.

If I read this right, the boys father pointed out that teachers have the same "weapons" at school and it seems to cause no concern.  I would like to hear how they explain that double standard in court.

[280plus]

So someone hung a lighter from a school, and this kid found it?  

Yea, they're wierd like that in NJ.

The part about him being a Boy Scout cracks me up. I used to work with the Boy Scouts. Some of them kids were the biggest firebugs I ever met. Boy Scout with a lighter? Yea, that might be cause for concern. 

[MechAg94]

When I was a kid (elementary school age) one of our chores was to take the trash out to the burn barrel and burn it.  We had fun with it.  IMO, the best way to take the fire bug out of the kid is to just let him burn stuff on occasion.

[AJ Dual]

My nickname with my Mom's side of the family was "The Torch" growing up. 

[BReilley]

When I was a kid (elementary school age) one of our chores was to take the trash out to the burn barrel and burn it.  We had fun with it.  IMO, the best way to take the fire bug out of the kid is to just let him burn stuff on occasion.

Fire is still my preferred method of black widow/giant wolf spider removal.
We have these enormous widows here in Queen Creek - bodies sometimes as big as dimes - and they are FAST.  Mr. Bernz-o-matic accompanies me out to the porch every few nights, and together we hunt.  It only took one big wolf spider with a back full'o'babies to convince me that stomping just wouldn't cut it anymore.

Plus, fire is cool. :D

[freakazoid]

It only took one big wolf spider with a back full'o'babies to convince me that stomping just wouldn't cut it anymore.

Well I'm not going to be able to get that image out of my mind for a while.

*shivers in a corner. 

[BReilley]

Well I'm not going to be able to get that image out of my mind for a while.

*shivers in a corner. 

Well... if you really want an image, we took photographs.  Every so often I will light one up with someone else around - and when they get a funny look, I show them the "after" pic, with the dead spider and the hundreds(thousands?) of dust motes for 2' around it... except they're not dust motes.  Yuck.

Regarding the OP, I often lent my pocketknife(I started carrying it because being part of the stage crew was difficult without certain tools) to my high-school teachers, or helped to open packages.  Of course, this was back in the old days... ten years ago.

I am often floored by the amount of change which has taken place in my own short lifetime.

[tyme]

I remember a classmate of mine in high school who nearly hanged himself in a classroom while joking around (when a noose is hanging from the ceiling of COURSE you get on a chair and put your head through it, right???) and someone with a pocket knife cut him down.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

There were nooses randomly hanging from the ceiling in your high school?

[Perd Hapley]

There were nooses randomly hanging from the ceiling in your high school?

Why not?  If students are allowed to have pocket knives, they're just going to end up killing each other anyway. 

[Scout26]

We have these enormous widows here in Queen Creek - bodies sometimes as big as dimes - and they are FAST.

Note to self; never go near anywhere with the name "Queen Creek". [shiver]

[erictank]

Note to self; never go near anywhere with the name "Queen Creek". [shiver]

Not without a sealed environment suit and a flamethrower, at least.

<shivers>