The Freehold Regional High School District’s new plan to unfairly punish students who receive citations for motor vehicle infractions illustrates the district’s illogical decision-making and hasty rush to restrict.
A school district should not have any involvement whatsoever in implementing a punishment for a violation usually handled by municipal authorities. Just because a driver who falls into a certain age range might also happen to be a student in a certain high school does not mean they should be treated differently from all other drivers across the state.
The district’s program will only impart upon students the idea that establishing unjust policies is a permissible action. Plain and simple, this policy promotes a system of double jeopardy. The logical observer can determine that it is reprehensible of the district to punish a student a second time for a violation that the state has already determined to have been dealt with appropriately. If the stated aim of a high school is to educate students so that they are able to function as decent members of society, then this new program is nothing less than a step in the wrong direction.
This policy is tantamount to the ruling of a boss that his employees will be restricted from parking in the company lot if they happen to be found to have received a ticket. Certainly, such a policy would never be seen as appropriate or allowable under the law. Yet, the district is allowed to proceed with its analogous program under the guise of public safety. Now that the district is in the business of protection, why does it not apply the same policy to the teachers and administrators that park at its facilities?
Under the district’s logic, this will force them to be safer while driving, which can only be beneficial. Undoubtedly, not one of the district’s teachers or administrators would like to have their parking privileges revoked if they were ticketed for a motor vehicle violation, an occurrence which is likely to happen. Thus they should be able to sympathize with their students.
This policy only serves to illustrate the administration’s disconnect with the young adults it hopes to protect. It apparently does not realize that those students who lose their parking privilege will simply resort to parking off school grounds and thus be forced to cross the road to school, facing the danger of heavy traffic during school opening and dismissal. The district fails to understand simple logic and thus its strategy is unjust and flawed.
Gilbert M. Rein
Marlboro