A Bit Excessive? I Second That

Posted by Eugene Volokh:
A Bit Excessive, No?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_05_07-2006_05_13.shtml#1147203516


[1]A local TV station site reports:

 Ryan Biggar, 16, and his 17-year-old girlfriend had permission to
 leave Middle Creek High School for an off-campus program. When
 their event was canceled for the day, they were caught having sex
 in the girl's home.

 It violated school rules, and officials say those rules apply no
 matter where you are during school hours.

 But ... Biggar's family is filing a lawsuit against the school
 system, saying his suspension for the rest of the school year is
 unconstitutional. He says he had no notice that private,
 consensual, off-campus sexual activity could subject him to school
 suspension....

 Wake County school spokesman Michael Evans says that having sex
 during school hours breaks the rules -- even in a private home.

 "Whereever you are during school hours. It's a privilege to leave
 campus for lunch and you sign a form to that effect, as do your
 parents," Evans said. "So it was with full consent and knowledge
 that they participate under these rules and if they chose to break
 them then disciplinary action will come into play."

 Court documents include a copy of the lunch permit application,
 which states that students exercising off-campus lunch privileges
 are subject to the rules of student conduct, as applicable to the
 regular school day. Biggar and one of his parents had signed the
 application....

I can't speak to whether the suspension violates school rules or
state
law -- or violates the Due Process Clause because there wasn't
adequate notice.

But setting aside the legal question, even if the student did
violate
the rules, isn't the punishment (what sounds like several weeks'
suspension) somewhat disproportional to the offense? Yes, he was
essentially playing hooky, and should be punished for that; but I
don't see why it's the school's business whether he was playing
hooky
to have sex at home or playing hooky to play video games at home. (I
believe that the age of consent in North Carolina is 16, so there's
no
question of illegality here.) Screwing up the boy's (and presumably
the girl's) studying and exam schedule, and depriving them of a
month
or more of what one would hope is a valuable educational experience,
doesn't seem to make much sense.

Thanks to reader Mike Bavli for the pointer.

References

1. http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=local&id=4154105

My personal thoughts on this case consititues a good indication that I still am a conservative Chinese. I can't believe the controversy here is the appropiateness of penalty ! It's probably fair enough for the parents of the teen couple in the case as well as the writer to hold such a point of view, considering that they are American. I personally won't be able to accept it if I were the parent of the teen couple, they are just 16 and 17 years old!!! While I neither care much about the Catholic's rule of against pre-marital sex, nor suggesting sex as a sinful taboo, but the fact of having sex at the age of 16 or 17 still appear to be disturbing to me and far beyond my acceptance.

American/English teenagers are notorious for their open attitude about sex, there's even a sex education policy debate in U.K. about whether or not oral sex should be taught as part of the sex education program in secondary school, so students could probably have oral sex instead of intercourse...

Ideas like such literally render me speechless, I guess they have excluded the possibility of trying to tackle the problem with moral education in the first place.

If there is one thing that I'll appreciate of Hong Kong's education system, the conservation per traditional Chinese value about chestity is it.

On a second thought, a year ago, there were two Hong Kong students of same age to the teen couple in this case committed suicide after the girl had pragnented for 3 months, for they didn't know pragnency prevention measures at the time they have sex, it is really sad for the waste of their lives in such a silly way due at least partly to the flawness of Hong Kong's sex education.