Life in the Laugh Lane: Laying down the ‘law’

Written by Bill Rifkin
Thursday, 15 September 2011 00:00

I sat the kids down and had “the talk” with them. Not the one you’re thinking of. We got the 36-page Code of Conduct (COD) booklet from the school district. I felt compelled to read it just to see how they could have 36 pages of rules. In my day, the COD was “sit down; shut up or we’ll call your parents.” And calling your parents wasn’t like calling your defense attorney. I was raised under the presumption of guilt. And for good reason, it saved time. I was guilty, so why belabor the point.

What I discuss below are the actual rules — I am not making this stuff up. They ban Super Bowl and March Madness pools. Curiously, they also ban raffles wherein your odds are 50/50. Have you ever been in a raffle where your odds were so good? Isn’t a 50/50 raffle a coin toss? Isn’t this the same school district that holds raffles all the time? I guess they’re fine as long as the chance of you seeing your money again is less than 50%.

Another quote: “Materials that can be recycled must be recycled.” Not should be, or it would be nice, or please save our planet, but MUST. Can you picture the hardened criminal in documentary footage asked to pinpoint when his life spun out of control? “I was doing fine, even on the honor roll and thought about being a dentist, but then I got caught tossing out that darn soda can and one thing led to another and now I’m in Attica.” Can you believe somebody, somewhere felt so strongly about the school’s recycling performance as to not only include mention in the COD, but to make it a MUST? I certainly hope the taxpayers are not funding a position whose duties include policing this. They don’t even specify what is to be recycled. Can’t almost anything fall into the category of “can be recycled”? Do they recycle hall passes? How about half-eaten lunches? I am not above noting the irony of mailing out a 36-page printed paper document to every parent demanding their child’s eco-consciousness.

Amongst offenses considered to be “insubordinate” is “lying to school personnel.” They don’t state “in the course of an investigation,” or any stipulation. So essentially, every student at every moment walks about under oath. I am not in favor of lying, but how many times would any of us been beaten to a pulp in school had we been 100% truthful all the time? “Billy, did you see who purposely dropped that book to make noise in the library?” “Billy, does this pantsuit make me look fat?”

That the following requires saying is quite scary, [The student must] “ensure that underwear is completely covered with outer clothing.” I presume there was a “test case,” otherwise what a bizarre thing to require? Sort of akin to the Woody Allen line in Bananas when the crazed new dictator decrees, “All citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check.” Well, not in Lewisboro. We wear our underwear underneath!

The fact that they have to add this statement (“... nor are students entitled to be advised of their Miranda warning prior to questioning by a school official”), means some parent sometime offered the defense of their child’s misbehavior that the admission of guilt was coerced. Did you realize our schools’ COD mentions the Miranda warning?!? While I was reading the COD to my kids, I had to not only figure out who was the “party of the first part,” but explain that it was no better than being the “party of the second part.” At least, they didn’t include a sanity clause. Then I would have had to haul out the Marx’ Brothers joke of their being “no such thing as a sanity clause.”