School Expulsion for Marijuana results in Student’s Suicide
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 2:20 pm | By: Justice
Unbending Rules on Drugs in Schools Drive One Teen to the Breaking Point
Zero Tolerance isn’t a slogan, it’s a pledge to do whatever it takes to make you quit, jail you, or kill you. This time the penalties added up to an overwhelming burden for Josh Anderson, who had the unfortunate luck to be caught in possession twice in two years.
“I really have been working hard on this,” Josh wrote to the hearing officers. “I can’t believe I’m putting my parents through this now. I can’t believe how selfish and stupid I’ve been. . . . I’m honestly going to try my hardest to fix this.”
The Andersons were told that Josh would be barred from any regular Fairfax high school and might be tossed out of the system entirely. His parents were looking into private schools or moving. But there would be no hearing, no new school, no more visits from college football coaches asking about Josh’s talents. Without a word to his girlfriend, parents, psychologist, coach or teachers, Josh Anderson, 17, had killed himself.
He left a note, just two lines. “Why does it have to be like this?” And, to his girlfriend, “I love you.”
“No one can ever answer whether Fairfax County was responsible for what Josh did,” says Tim Anderson. “But they pushed him closer to the edge than he needed to be.” The parents know their son’s often-silent manner masked emotional troubles, but he had been in counseling, both through the school system and privately, and no one saw this coming. The trauma of facing expulsion, the Andersons believe, was just too much for their son.
In Fairfax, possession of marijuana on school grounds means automatic suspension and a recommendation of expulsion. “There’s no discretion at the school level,” says Paul Regnier, spokesman for the system. “Virginia law requires that if there’s possession of marijuana on school grounds, the student must be expelled unless there are special circumstances.”
Despite what you may think, Josh is a victim of the drug war. Zero Tolerance laws were envisioned as both a deterrent to use (with no effect) and a review-free way to remove meddlesome kids (works every time). Wonder why your local High School has a 40% dropout rate? These laws damage our society by under educating our soon to be fellow citizens. I recall being told once that future prison populations utilize high school drop out rates in their calculations. So with the expulsion, Virginia was planning the future for Josh and he decided that he wanted no part of it.
“Why does it have to be like this?”
I’m asking you for Josh, because he couldn’t make it here to ask you himself.
It hurts to read stories like this. I’ve known good friends who have taken their own lives and I came very close myself. This is the problem with so many systems of America. There’s a right and there’s a wrong. Extenuating circumstances don’t exist. Laws stopped providing us with rights and started limiting them. Restrictions on people’s lives have filtered us into a system. A system that sounds concrete in theory, but when carried out it proves to convict the innocent, and to provide loop holes for the corrupt. People like Josh deserve to have everything they could ever wish for, but are halted by a flawed government that prevents us from living the life we want for ourselves.
Rest In Peace Josh.
“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.”
-Lois McMaster Bujold