Expulsions

So yesterday was an exciting day here at “Edison.”  I was sitting in the library reading student work, when all of a sudden I heard a long, high-pitched whistle.  At first I thought it was a child doing that screech whistle that I don’t know how to do, but then I realized it was far too long for that, and the pitch was off, and then I realized that was I was hearing was, in fact, a fire work.  I turned around and behind me, just off the main, second floor hallways, smoke was pouring out of the girl’s bathroom.  A steady stream of excited children poked their heads in and out of the bathroom.  When I arrived on the scene, many of the children scattered.  I saw three girls go into the bathroom, two of whom were my students.
    I asked one of them if everyone was okay, and she said yes, and then the other came out of the bathroom (I was still in the hallway) holding the burnt stub of the now dormant roman candle.  I grabbed a few of the students who were milling about and asked them what they saw, but they all clammed up pretty quick.  Then Alice (the assistant principle) and Mrs. P (the guidance counselor arrived) and started grilling the children.  Pretty soon we had a name of a possible suspect (an eighth grade girl), and within a few more minutes we (well, Alice, really, with me and Mrs. P as witness) had the girl’s locker open and had found in her bag a lighter and a small, foldable knife.
    It seemed unlikely to me that, in the mayhem that followed the firework going off (it was maybe 15 or 20 second after it was lit that I was on the scene), the suspect (notice how I’m talking like a cop) had returned to her locker to hide her lighter in her bag.  We began to suspect that the alleged firework igniter had an accomplice.  Alice took the bag with its nefarious contents and went to pull the student out of class to see if she could get the perp to flip on her co-conspirator.
    I went into Mrs. P’s office to identify from the “facebook” (literally a book with pictures of all faces of the students) the third student I saw in the bathroom, who I didn’t know; all I remembered was that she was latina and was wearing a pink shirt.  I realized pretty quickly that I am a terrible eye-witness.  Though I saw two students who I thought might have been the third witness, I couldn’t saw for sure; then I became paralyzed by the fear that I was merely racially profiling the children (which, of course, I was and began to suspect my own identification).  The third witness was never identified.
    However Alice did succeed in getting our primary suspect to roll-over on her accomplice.  They opened her locker (another eighth grade girl) and found a bag of dope, a pipe, and several more lighters.
    Both of the girls were immediately suspended, pending an expulsion hearing. 
    When I walked out through the main office later on, I saw both of them sequestered in the nurse’s office, weeping profusely.  Then they both went white when they saw a uniformed police officer enter the office.  That was the point at which I walked out into a strangely glorious afternoon.
   
    I am deeply skeptical of zero-tolerance policies, and I doubt the value (for the “perps”) of expulsion in most cases.  In this case the firework caused no damage--though of course there was the potential to have caused a lot of damage, either by fire or by setting off the sprinklers--and I have to say I do wonder why the sprinklers didn’t go off, given the volume of smoke, but I suppose they need to be triggered by smoke and heat.  The real damage the firework caused was that it put the school administrators on the trail to finding these girl’s drugs.  This whole episode seems like a pretty obvious example of why we don’t charge children with adult crimes--because they are pretty much incapable of thinking through the consequences of their actions.  I am not going to sit here and excuse these girl’s behavior.  What they did was dangerous and dumb--and doubly dumb for not considering that, on a day when you drugs in your lockers, it might not be all that bright to set off fireworks in the girl’s bathrooms.
    Truthfully I have found the whole episode hilarious--except when I start to think about those two girls, sitting at home, terrified about their fates and what will become of them.  And maybe through that they will learn something about cause and effect, about choice and consequence.  I just hope that the consequences of this dumb choice won’t stick with them for too long.