No Judgment + No Discretion = Zero Tolerance

This one goes out to those who yearn for simplicity in complex times. For “rules to be rules.” For “accountability” and “black-and-white.” It comes out of a Southern California suburb that shall remain nameless because this could have happened anywhere. As, in fact it is happening, in ways that are infinitely more far-reaching than the modest example set forth here.

The story opens at a high school formal. Music is blasting in the off-campus ballroom that has been rented for the night. In the parking lot, limos disgorge clusters of dressed-up teenagers. The girls look the way teenage girls look now, like supermodels. The guys look the way teenage guys have looked forever--like tall versions of little boys.

Ever trendy, a crowd of seniors has shown up in a privately chartered bus. They’re popular--athletes and honor students, class officers. There are 40, of every race, creed and color, mingling in that pan-ethnic way peculiar to West Coast children. Earlier in the evening, their families gathered in someone’s ranch house to see them off with snacks and group photos. The bus idea won kudos: so inclusive. So preemptive of the drunk driving that plagues these high school functions. So responsible.

Ah, but not as responsible as the adults imagine. Big slumber parties are planned for after the dance, and unbeknownst to the parents, some kids have packed booze, at least one has Ecstasy stashed in a prescription pill bottle and another kid is carrying pot for a friend. Some might say this is your basic teen cross-section, unchanged since early man. Of course, early man’s elders had only the tools of wit and wisdom. These kids’ elders have Zero Tolerance.

The kid with the Ecstasy got caught at the door, stunning his date, a conservative girl. As per school policy--set forth in standard zero-tolerance language--the police were called and the boy was hauled off in a squad car. Suspension was immediate and automatic, as was his transfer to another district school.

The incident might have ended there, but--as is, again, often standard in these zero tolerance matters--the private bus was then searched while the students danced. Overnight bags were rifled; the booze and pot were turned up. More police, more interrogations. One kid had done no more than pretend to sip a vodka-and-orange juice so his pals wouldn’t tease him. Terrified, he broke down and confessed to “drinking,” even though a blood test that night showed his system to be free of alcohol.

And tolerance was zero. So every kid suspected of wrongdoing--drunk or sober, troubled or just uncharacteristically stupid--faced the same punishment. Automatic suspension, automatic transfer. Was education served? Were the kids? What was the lesson? Was it uniformly useful? No one dared wonder. Rules were rules.

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Lest you’re thinking now that this is purely about the civil rights of children: It isn’t, exactly, though that issue has made plenty of news, from Jesse Jackson’s defense of six Illinois kids expelled for brawling to reports from Orange County that zero tolerance is jamming its continuation schools.

Rather--and this, I think, is the more interesting issue--note how the rules utterly negated the need for any authority figure to make anything approaching a case-by-case judgment call. In fact, judgment was forbidden, which is the unspoken corollary of zero tolerance rules: They tolerate zero wit or wisdom, zero consideration of the larger picture. There is no place for adult discretion or, more important, for the accountability that goes with it. The adults in the school incident, essentially, got to opt out of any decision. One response fit all.

This is not just a school thing, this business of rules usurping the role once reserved for judgment. It’s the same with the courts, as any jurist in the age of Three Strikes and rigid sentencing “guidelines” will tell you now. It’s the same with public universities in this era of all-powerful SATs and numbers-based admissions. It’s what makes some corporations fixate on the “metrics” of every hunch and inspiration. It’s what has driven the push in California and Michigan and elsewhere to try children as adults.

Never mind that one-size-wisdom has proven time and again to be ineffective and sometimes lethally unjust. There seems no resisting the allure of the black-and-white. The call is for accountability among kids or criminals or other target populations. But no one mentions the forced cop-out these rules have imposed on those who are charged with exercising proportion and reason. When the rules rule, what happens to that accountability?

Thus, the complication in the current, all-hands political call for “simplicity”: It takes a human to address the human condition. Ruling out gray areas--in campuses or corporations or courtrooms--has yet to make them less gray.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.