Mother defends ill daughter from 'zero tolerance'

In response to Phyllis Benson's letter of Nov. 22, which was in response to mine, I can only imagine how difficult being a teacher must be, especially considering the horrific events of the past few years. I completely agree that safety should be of great concern at schools.

What I don't understand is why Ms. Benson assumes that I believe that only rich, beautiful students should be saved from punishment? My daughter was and is beautiful, but we certainly weren't rich.

That doesn't mean I believe students should not be punished for breaking rules, but at least the punishment should fit the crime.

In my daughter's case, I think being led to a police car in handcuffs, taken to the station and booked for not being aware her brother had a little knife on his key ring was definitely overkill. A three-day suspension would have been enough punishment for such an honest mistake and would have turned it into a learning experience rather than a traumatic event.

I wasn't going to respond to Ms. Benson's letter- but when I read the line, "Your daughter learned a difficult lesson and needs to work on making it a positive part of her learning experiences," my adrenalin started pumping. She has no idea who my daughter is and what she has to work on. She also has no idea how her bitter words hurt my heart. My daughter will be lucky to live the rest of her life to work on anything, including learning from her experiences. She was diagnosed with cancer in January, and after chemotherapy, radiation and brain surgery, she is now facing a stem cell transplant to save her life.

So we certainly understand that life isn't always fair. In certain situations, however, we can ensure that it sometimes is, by taking incidents at school and looking at them carefully before rendering a zerotolerance judgement. Those in authority should be given the ability to render fair judgment when innocence is proven beyond reasonable doubt. Hopefully this type of debate will generate a solution to the current out-of-balance zero-tolerance policy, such as one in Texas which has conditions.

Right now I'm just angry that I have to defend my daughter to people who make inaccurate assumptions. I'm fairly certain that the thought of perpetrating violence at school had never entered her mind, hence not looking through her brother's key ring for potential weapons. So admitting she made a mistake by not being aware of a little 2-inch knife on her brother's key ring should have initiated a debate whether she was a threat to fellow students or not. But because of a fearbased system called Zero Tolerance, a shy, loving young girl had to be subjected to the same treatment that hard-core criminals are. You tell me- is that fair? She's the type of girl who would say, "Mom, just let it go." Maybe now I can. Sheri Hancock Aliso Viejo