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.
Loading ...
Some what of the same thing happend to me at CCHS High School in Gillette Wy. I got in a little fender bender in my friends car at lunch and i showed up late. Due to the fact that I showed up late the school thought they had the right to call me down for suspicion of bieng under the influence. I felt that i was bieng targeted since i had in previous years let the principle hear my mind about bieng able to search me for nothing but thinking i was stoned when i had pink eye. So i got adjitated and said they have no right to U,A me for Marijuana and talkin shit about my friend so i toled her that she has no right to talk about these people without them bieng here so theirfore shut up. Then they imediatly through me out of the school and said your not welcome back so just stay home. and i was curiouse if it was a leagle thing they did or not.
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