My Choate career has been marked by failure. My first year here, I blundered through a “reasonably successful third form year,” as my term report reads, but I’ve had my share of Thursday D’s. Like many Choate students — like many teenagers — I matured and developed useful habits to the credit of my prefects, advisers, and deans.
Much like these role models, my mistakes have guided me to my improved yet still improvable state. I am thankful that Choate forgave, permitted, and at times encouraged my mistakes inside and outside of the classroom, such as skipping a class to study for an upcoming in-class essay. However, I’ve always been disappointed that Choate offers no second chance for one mistake in particular: drug offenses.
I oppose Choate’s policy of zero tolerance toward drugs for two reasons. First, research shows that zero-tolerance policies not only fail to deter drug use, but they also can be actively detrimental to high school students. Second, Choate is wrong to discipline violators of its drug policy differently than violators of its policies on alcohol and tobacco.
In Choate’s case, zero tolerance means that any student who purchases, manufactures, possesses, distributes or abuses illegal drugs, prescription drugs, or “any other chemical substances” will be dismissed without exception.
By default, zero-tolerance policies lack nuance and flexibility, both of which are necessary to avoid instances of excessive force. For this reason, zero-tolerance policies have caused national controversy. In 2001, the St. Pete Times reported that a ten-year-old girl was expelled for bringing a knife to a local school, despite the fact that her mother placed the small knife in the girl’s lunchbox for cutting an apple and that she handed the knife over to authorities immediately. In another instance, a boy suffered expulsion for speaking on the phone with his mother while at school, even though his mother was a soldier deployed in Iraq and had not spoken to him in 30 days.
Proponents of zero-tolerance policies in general often justify these instances of gross mismanagement by espousing the benefits of a strong and unwavering message sent to students, aimed at deterring more serious wrongdoing. Yet, in the years after zero-tolerance policies gained popularity in the 1990s, the psychological community has discredited the notion that such policies increase deterrence. In 2008, the American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force published an extensive review of literature regarding zero-tolerance policies from throughout 20 years of the policy’s prominence asserting that “there is no evidence…that zero tolerance has increased the consistency of school discipline across schools with identical policies.” The Task Force found that school faculty members tend to enforce their zero-tolerance rules inconsistently, by varying their levels of vigilance and inserting their personal disciplinary philosophies in every case.
In varying their disciplinary practices, a school’s personnel negate the consistency with which zero-tolerance policies are meant to be enforced. Choate ought not to consider itself beyond the scope of this study: we need to investigate whether all faculty enforce the drug policy with equal rigor. If not, Choate cannot claim that its policy on drugs sends a clear and consistent message to its students.
Now, what about the consequences on the campus of immediately removing students who don’t comply with Choate’s drug policy? A 1980 study by Professor James Bickel, at the University of Kentucky, found that schools with higher rates of school suspension and expulsion appear to have less satisfactory ratings of school climate, as measured by trained observers. Another study by Shi-Chang Wu, supported by the National Institute of Education, concluded that schools with higher rates of serious discipline appear to have less satisfactory school governance structures. In 2004, University of Florida professor Terrance M. Scott reported that schools with higher rates of serious discipline tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time on disciplinary matters.
The biggest confusion of Choate’s zero-tolerance policy, however, lies in the Student Handbook itself, in the disparate treatment between drugs and substances like alcohol or tobacco. Why does the school “aspire to be a drug free community,” yet often permit students who consume alcohol to remain on campus? In drawing this distinction, Choate acknowledges that the illegal consumption of a prohibited substance doesn’t necessarily place the community in dire straits. Therefore, either zero-tolerance policy must be repealed, or the Handbook must explain why Choate chooses not to tolerate certain substances, despite the evidence that shows these policies hurt their communities.
This distinction may be rooted in the fact that alcohol and tobacco are restricted, not illegal, substances. But this implies that underage drinking, by virtue of its legal classification, disrupts the “order and decorum” that the major rules intend to protect more than illicit substances. Given the controversy regarding drug criminalization, a process whose history has been marred with racial prejudice and antiscientific biases, the assumption that drugs are worse because they’re illegal is a weak and semantic one that Choate hardly defends in its Handbook. Furthermore, this argument seems to suggest that because Choate students may one day legally consume alcohol and tobacco, the illegal consumption of those substances today is less reprehensible. This suggestion is, of course, ludicrous: why should one person be found in violation of the law lose his or her place here while another does not? On both counts, the argument that drug possession, because of its heightened illegality, warrants more discipline than alcohol and tobacco possession falls. I would like to hope that Choate’s reasoning behind its discrepancy is rooted in more complex reasoning than legal convention.
Zero-tolerance can often lead to unreasonable punishments. It also often fails to send a consistent message to students and improve school climate. Many times in my life, I have observed how second chances and forgiveness not only help one learn from one’s mistakes but also nurture a culture of reason and compassion. This is the kind of environment that best fosters learning.
That environment is also fragile, requiring careful preservation. For that reason, I understand Choate’s intolerance of any action that is “detrimental to the wellbeing of the individual and the community.” However, I implore the administration to examine the true implications and consequences of a policy of zero-tolerance towards drugs.
