Zero tolerance policy

We have heard of the Columbine shooting, where in the spring of 1999 in Littleton, Colorado over a dozen people where killed and many others were wounded at the hands of two students. Or even more recently, we heard about the Virginia Tech massacre where a single student killed thirty-two people and wounded over twenty more. University of Texas, California State University, San Diego State University, the list of school violence is long and heart-breaking. Students and teachers have lost their lives by the dozens to gunmen that carried a grudge for some reason or another. These are extreme cases, for sure, and there is without a doubt a need for discipline in schools every where. However, zero-tolerance policies are not the answer to school discipline unless they can be reformed to have fewer gray areas and kept from being too strict, be less disruptive to the education process and allow teachers to keep their voices, and figure out how to correct claims of racial discrimination, regardless of claims that they are effective.
I believe that the zero tolerance policy is very unfair because it punishes everyone for the problems of few. Even if you 're the best student in the school and have never taken any drugs or used any weapons except for the butter knife, you still have to feel uncomfortable as if you really have used drugs or weapons. For example, in the article by Jesse Katz, when it talks about the girl who got Midol to school and shared it with another girl with the sole purpose of easing menstrual cramps. Kimberly, the girl who had gotten the drug along with Erica, the girl that received the drug got a ten-day suspension. The parents of Kimberly got the district later on with a federal lawsuit for racial discrimination because the school suspended Kimberly, who is black, for 80 more days because she had the drug.
Another example from the article of this unfairness would be the seventh grader from West Virginia who shared a zinc cough drop with his friend.

Cited: (2001, 10). Zero Tolerance: Doubtful Indeed. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 10, 2001, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Zero-Tolerance-Doubtful-Indeed-33848.html Koch, Kathy. "Zero Tolerance for School Violence: Is Mandatory Punishment in Schools Unfair?" CQ Researcher Online 10.9 10 Mar. 2000. 185-208. CQ Press. Web. 4 Nov 2011. Billitteri, Thomas. "Discipline in Schools: Are Zero-Tolerance Policies Fair?" CQ Researcher Online 18.7 15 Feb. 2008. 148-168. CQ Press. Web. 4 Nov 2011. Rachel, et al., "Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2007," National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, and Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, December 2007, Web. 4 Nov. 2011.