8 y/o suspended for smelling a marker
Posted on April 5th, 2008 by bile Categories and Tags: Uncategorized, Adams County School District, Adams School District, Chris Benisch, confiscation, Costco, drugs, Eathan Harris, education, Eric Lavonas, freedom, fucking retarded, Harris Park Elementary School, John Harris, liberty, parenting, propaganda, Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center, schoolingAdams School District 50 is defending its decision to punish a third grader for sniffing a Sharpie marker.
Eight-year-old Eathan Harris was originally suspended from Harris Park Elementary School for three days. Principal Chris Benisch reduced the suspension to one day after complaints from Harris’ parents.
Harris used a black Sharpie marker to color a small area on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.
“It smelled good,” Harris said. “They told me that’s wrong.”
Eathan’s father, John Harris, says the school overreacted for treating Eathan as if he was huffing, or inhaling, marker fumes.
“I think it’s outlandish,” John Harris said. “It’s ridiculous.”
Eathan shyly shook his head “no” when a reporter asked if he knew about “huffing.”
Benisch stands by his decision to suspend Harris, saying it sends a clear message about substance abuse.
Right… because a kid who doesn’t even understand why he was punished will get the “clear message about substance abuse.” And it gets even better:
In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to “become intoxicated.”
A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.
Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high.
“I don’t know whether it would be possible for a real overachiever to figure out a way to get high off them,” Lavonas said. “But in regular use, it’s just not something that’s going to happen.”
“If you went to Costco and bought 50 bags of Sharpies and did something to them, maybe there’s a way to get creative and make it happen,” Lavonas said.
Adams County School District 50 leaders were unfazed by the poison control center’s medical opinion.
“Principals make hundreds of decisions everyday based on our best judgment. And in that time, smelling that marker, I felt like, ‘Wow, that’s a very serious marker,’” Benisch said.
And I’m like: “Wow, principals make hundreds of fucking retarded decisions everyday based on their best but flawed judgment.”
My evidence?
Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.
“We’ve purged every permanent marker there is in this building,” he said.
4 Responses to “8 y/o suspended for smelling a marker”
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April 6th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I received this today from Cheri Fayle:
April 6th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
hmm.
im reminded of a time when huffing magic markers in art class was permissible, hell–even encouraged. a rite of passage if you will: mr. sketch
"What’s really going on here?"
its simple.
Principal Chris Benisch hates children and magic markers.
he had a rough childhood.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:56 am
This same sort of thing happened to me when I was in third or fourth grade. I went to the Nurse’s office with a migraine (though it was before I’d been diagnosed, so I didn’t realize it was a migraine). When the Nurse asked me if I’d been doing anything strange beforehand, I mentioned that I’d been sniffing White Out.
Now, I meant "smelling." I didn’t know that "sniffing" had a drug connotation, nor did I understand that this was bad. All I knew was that suddenly, the Nurse was flipping out. She kept asking me why I’d do that, and I kept responding, "I like the smell."
The next day, the principal banned all White Out from the school.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:43 am
I think it’s more likely you were in fact a plant from the pencil companies. Making it harder to fix mistakes with pens incentives people to use pencils.