By Jacob Golomb ’16

A Texas teenager named Ahmed Mohamed made headlines last month when, in an effort to impress his teachers, he rebuilt a clock inside a pencil case. One of Mohamed’s teachers, because she thought it looked like a bomb (and maybe also because Mohamed is Muslim), sent the student to the principal. Even though Mohamed had explained that the device was a clock, the principal, pursuant to zero-tolerance policies, contacted the police who arrested and booked him.

Although Mohamed’s unfortunate punishment was a result of jumping to conclusions and possibly Islamophobia, the main culprit was the school’s zero-tolerance policy. Zero-tolerance policies set strict, automatic punishments for breaking specific rules. The school decided that its policies called for having him arrested for bringing in a fake bomb even after it was clear that it was a clock.

Mohamed is a victim of policies eager to punish students on suspicion of rule-breaking. Instead of setting these strict rules for automatic penalties, schools should have incidents reviewed on a case-by-case basis.