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Zero Sense

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6/16/00 7:10 p.m.
Zero Sense
A Good Samaritan falls victim to zero tolerance.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NRO associate editor---------------lopezk@ix.netcom.com

enjamin Ratner, an eighth grader in Loudon County, Virginia may not graduate from school this month. His sin? Saving a friend's life.

Earlier this year, Benjamin Ratner was slipped a note by a troubled classmate that said she had a knife in her notebook. Knowing she had talked of suicide, Ratner took the notebook from her and put the knife in his locker, planning, according to his lawyer, to bring it home to his mother, a friend of the girl's mother. Another student reported to school officials that Ratner had a knife in his locker. Benjamin Ratner was immediately suspended from the Blue Ridge Middle School for "weapons possession" for four months (the remainder of the school year). School officials told him he would be arrested if he returned to the school campus.

A panel from the Loudon County school board reviewed the case and found young Benjamin's actions "laudable and admirable," but sustained the suspension — their hands tied by the tyranny of zero tolerance. The rules say a student cannot have a weapon; he had a knife; he was suspended.

The Loudon County school officials would not talk to National Review Online about the case or whether Ratner, who kept up with his studies while banned from school, would graduate. The Ratners are currently suing the school on a number of grounds, including cruel and unusual punishment, absence of due process, and the violation of various state statutes.

This is not the first and won't be the last child to be penalized by wrong-headed zero-tolerance policies. As John Whitehead, of the Rutherford Institute, which is representing Ratner, notes, "zero tolerance is not working." It punishes good kids and "takes away [educators'] discretion to act." In other words, zero tolerance makes zero sense.

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