Sunday, March 16, 2008

Detention for saving lives??

Here's the story. A high school student in California left school early one day because she didn't feel good. She got a ride home on a school bus full of elementary school students. The bus driver hit her head on a turn and fell out of her seat which left the bus pretty much going anywhere gravity wanted to take it. The high school student jumped up and stopped it after hitting only two parked cars, which I think is about the least amount of damage you would expect from a runaway school bus.
As it turns out, the person I would consider the hero of the story got detention for skipping school. From the view of the schoolboard, they will probably say she didn't know she would save a bunch of lives when she skipped school, but think about how the situation would end if it involved celebrities. For example, last year Lindsey Lohan plead guilty to drunk driving and some cocaine use. Now for "normal" people you would expect them to be in jail atleast overnight right? Lohan spent 84 minutes in jail, and her sentence included only probation and attending places to help her kick the habit. Nothing about community service or anything, all she had to do was make herself better. Does anyone reading this have an experience with drunk driving? A friend of mine a few years ago was just in the car of a drunk driver and she was in jail overnight. Maybe Lohan's case was like that because she had money to get out immediately and pay for all the clinics and stuff, but still, no community service? I'm not very familiar with laws regarding this sort of thing but doesn't everybody get that?
This example might not parallel exactly to the high-school student's above, but looking at a broader aspect, the student broke a rule and saved lives, and recieved probably the maximum punishment the school could of given her. Lohan on the other hand, broke some rules, didn't help or hurt anybody but herself, and recieves encouragement to make a better decision next time. I don't want to say whether the ruling should of been detention or no detention, my point is that it should be the same regardless of wealth or popularity. If you have any exapmles involving celebrities that more closely go with the school bus story, please share them. Thanks.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Schools are notorious for worrying about the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of the law, so they have no tolerance and no flexibility when dealing with situations like the forgotten pocket knife in the A student's pocket, or a kid giving another kid an aspirin for a headache. The problem is that school administrators want to make their jobs as simple as possible and not have to deal with complications. The problem with celebrities and the law must be more political--no one wants to be the one to put a popular figure behind bars.