Gregory Freeman: Judge Sent Wrong Signal To Suspended Football Players. StL P-D 10/25/1998

Headline: JUDGE SENT WRONG SIGNAL TO SUSPENDED FOOTBALL PLAYERS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Oct. 25, 1998
Section: METRO, Page: D3, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

Misbehavior And Punishment

Imagine yourself the parent of a teen-ager. He's ignored your 10:30 p.m. curfew, coming home at midnight instead.
    You decide that he should be punished. He was aware of the curfew but knowingly disobeyed it. As a result, you decide he will have to stay home the entire weekend.
   Now imagine that after you've set the punishment, your teenager files suit against you, alleging that it would be detrimental for him to have to stay home all weekend. A judge sides with the teenager, and despite the punishment you had set, your teenager gets to go out next weekend.
   What lesson does that teach?

That's the question I've been asking myself recently, in light of a judge's troubling decision to reinstate nine players to the Civic Memorial High School football team after officials had suspended them for drinking. The school is in the Bethalto School District.
The School Board suspended the nine from two games after conducting a hearing on allegations that they had been drinking at a party on Oct. 2. The drinking violated the Athlete's Code of Conduct, signed by all players and their parents.

But the parents for some of the students sued the district.
Madison County Circuit Judge Phillip J. Kardis of Madison County overturned the suspension. He cited a state law that he said could be read to require school officials to give students and their parents 10 days' notice before conducting a hearing, and to inform students that they did not have to answer questions. Apparently some or all of the students admitted to drinking.
Kardis also said that players had a "property right" to play on the team because they could be eligible for scholarships.

As a parent, I'm left scratching my head. Is playing on the football team really a "right"? Do students have a right to play in the band or be a member of the chess team? One could argue that a student could get a band scholarship or, conceivably, a chess scholarship. Should it be difficult to suspend students from these activities, too?

When I was a student at Beaumont High School, countless years ago, I was a joiner. I was a member of seemingly every student organization at the school. I was a member of the ecology club, the camera club, the Student Union, the tennis team, president of my class.
Yet despite all the groups I belonged to, I considered it a privilege to belong to those groups, never a right. I knew that if I violated the rules, I'd be kicked out of the groups. Not once did I think that if I'd violated the rules and were kicked out, I could appeal to the courts to be reinstated.

While the laws may state that students and their parents must get 10 days' notice and so forth before a school system decides to suspend a student, the same should not be the case for suspension from extracurricular activities. Suspension from school is a much more serious matter than suspension from the team for a couple of games.

In the recently released videotape of President Bill Clinton testifying before a federal grand jury, few Americans agreed with him when he argued that oral sex was not sex, even though Clinton's argument was based on a previous legal definition of exactly what sex is. While he may have been legally accurate, few Americans agreed with his assessment of what sex is and isn't.

The same is the case in the Bethalto matter. While the law may suggest that the school district should not have suspended the students, common sense suggests that they should have been suspended because they broke the rules.

School systems should be able to deal with basic disciplinary matters without interference from the courts. When the courts step in in cases such as the one in Bethalto, they undermine the authority of schools by sending a message that rules are made to be broken.

Not a good lesson for students to learn.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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