Archived Student wants school administrators and police to be held responsible for classmates suicide (fox43.com)
submitted ago by weezkitty
Posted by: weezkitty
Posting time: 5.2 years ago on
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Archived on: 2/12/2017 1:51:00 AM
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26 upvotes, 2 downvotes (93% upvoted it)
Archived Student wants school administrators and police to be held responsible for classmates suicide (fox43.com)
submitted ago by weezkitty
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[–] BitchBeCool 1 point 1 point 2 points (+2|-1) ago
Man, I really don't know how I feel on this... While not conclusive, I think it's reasonable to assume that if this student had not been confronted and received disciplinary action for "smelling like marijuana", he probably wouldn't have taken his life. But it's also reasonable to assume that if he and his friends had not smelled like weed, they wouldn't have been approached by administrators and the officer.
It's the job of administrators to enforce school policy, and it's the job of the police to enforce the law; it sounds like they had probable cause to believe policy/law was being violated, and thus a response of some kind was justified. So the question is then whether their specific response was reasonable and appropriate for these students.
The letter claims the students were "verbally attacked" by the admins and officer, alleging that this kid was told that he "had ruined his life" and that they "would fail their classes, had ruined their academic careers, and had made the biggest mistake of their life". The letter also states the students were questioned without their parents, suspended for two weeks from school, suspended from sports, driver's license revocation, and under threat of criminal charges.
The suspension from school and sports is reasonable, as that's pretty standard for violating a school drug policy (though I will admit that when I was in high school, there were many instances where such policies were bent for certain students for various reasons). Potential criminal charges are also reasonable, since they had probable cause to believe the students broke the law.
So the only thing left to be more scrutinized, in my opinion, is how the students were addressed verbally and questioned, and whether their licenses should have been pulled. But even if these things could have been done differently, I'm still not sure that means they should be held responsible for what this kid chose to do. It was his decision to either toke it up or associate with kids that were, and it was ultimately his decision to kill himself.