Rethinking zero tolerance and political correctness

Since the early ‘90s I have lectured at the FBI Academy, for law enforcement agencies, airlines, at schools and at businesses. I have also written extensively on how to prevent violent behavior and since my first book I have been an advocate of zero-tolerance policies for violence and drugs, but the intent of the policies I have proposed have morphed from no-tolerance into “no common sense.”

The no-tolerance policies that I had in mind when I first began encouraging school systems and businesses to adopt them were intended to be guidelines. No tolerance doesn’t mean a supervisor or principal shouldn’t use common sense.

School administrators are among the most frustrating perpetrators of no-sense policies. Perhaps the most egregious example is the case in Virginia where an eighth-grader was suspended for possessing a knife that he took away from a classmate who was planning to kill herself. In this case, officials for the school admitted that his behavior was noble, but they bowed to the ever-important no-tolerance policy.

A high school student cannot bring a club to school, but he can carry a baseball bat. We allow kids to drive an automobiles on campus - the very mode by which most deaths among teens will occur - but we won’t allow them to have a pair of hedge trimmers in the trunk of their vehicles for their after school jobs. Which is the weapon?

No tolerance for drugs is also a reasonable guideline, but use your head. In Colorado, a 6-year-old was suspended for bringing lemon drops to school and in Alabama a third-grader was suspended for five days for taking a vitamin. We will not allow a child to use an asthma inhaler without permission, but she can consume as much caffeine as she wants. Which one is the drug?

Airport screeners are no better at using common sense. In one airport, TSA agents forced a woman to drink breast milk to prove it was real breast milk. Stories abound of women being physically groped, old people in wheelchairs being harassed, and even babies being subjected to invasive searches. In yet another instance, a woman who had undergone a double mastectomy set off the metal detector and even though the woman showed these security geniuses her medical ID card proving she had a surgically implanted steel rod, they forced her to remove her blouse and bra so they could see for themselves. They actually get paid for this.

The TSA points to the dangerous “weapons” (like tweezers, nail clippers, and miniature pocket knives) it has amassed as evidence that the system is working. However, of those confiscated items that a normal person would consider a weapon, very few actually represented a real threat to the airplane or its passengers. All of this is eclipsed by the fact that a number of people have tested the TSA and successfully smuggled actual weapons like pepper spray, knives, and guns on board aircraft.

I have no special military training, yet I could easily fashion a weapon out of materials that are regularly found on airplanes. (I won’t mention them for fear that the TSA might lunge at the opportunity to amend their list of banned items.) There is no way that the TSA could remove every possible item that could be used as a weapon. There would be no plane, no crew, and no passengers. Instead, they should use their policies to guide them, not rule them.

The debate over whether pilots should have guns was also absurd. A pilot who is highly trained, highly educated, and exceptionally disciplined can be trusted with a 100-ton aircraft and 250 or more lives, but we aren’t sure if he or she is skilled enough to be trusted with a .38. Conversely, we will readily trust a sky marshal to carry a weapon - one with a fraction of the training, education and discipline. If I had to choose I would rather place my trust in the pilot. Instead, however, we have created hundreds of government jobs and we pay these sky marshals (and absolutely everyone on the plane who is paying any attention knows who that is) to do what is perhaps the world’s most boring job simply because we aren’t sure a pilot could handle a gun. Hello?

No-tolerance policies today are reflective of Ayn Rand’s 1938 novel “Anthem” in which a society has moved to such an extreme that any exercise of individual judgment is not only discouraged, but outlawed. As a college professor, I recognize that students who blindly accept what I teach are easier students to manage, but I also recognize that even when they earn good grades this type of student is inferior to the student who respectfully challenges me on occasion. A culture that blindly follows policy is far easier to manage, but it is reflective of a lower level of functioning. We are creating a culture of non-thinking, compliant responders who not only are afraid to think on their own, but perhaps are even incapable of it. It’s time we said, “Enough already!”