An eighth-grade honors student in the New Haven, Connecticut, government school system "was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles from a classmate." This was done because candy sales by students are forbidden under a policy enacted in 2003.
Okay, fine, the kid broke the rules. He says he didn't know the rule existed, but so what if he did? Does the school system really need to come down this hard on him over an extremely minor infraction? In the old days the teacher or principal would simply have confiscated the candy and warned the kids not to do it again. If they repeated the offense, then the punishment could be escalated, but it would have taken dozens of incidents of selling Skittles to warrant a punishment such as this. I guess this is what we get in "zero-tolerance" gub'mint schools: The schools can hand out free condoms, but kids who break minor regulations have the book thrown at them. (Thanks to Sean Moore.)
