When is a hug innocent or inappropriate? Administrators at Southwest Middle School in Palm Bay adopted a zero tolerance, no-hugging policy so school officials would not have to differentiate. But, that policy resulted in the in-school suspension of two Florida middle school students for hugging even though the principal said it appeared innocent.

Zero tolerance is typically applied to school policies like “no firearms”, but supporters said zero tolerance takes the guesswork and favoritism out of the “no-hug policy.”

It prompted Mr.Doon to pose the question:

How many people do they have to suspend before the community recognizes that this is completely ridiculous? If I was a student in that school, I’d organize a mass hug-in just to speed up the process.

An interesting proposal, yet Ufdionysus does not believe that a call for “civil disobedience” has any chance of success:

Unfortunately, very few students I’ve encountered in primary education are willing to commit civil disobedience.  I tried such things and couldn’t get any solidarity.  I found a lot of students scared to even put their names on a petition they agreed with.  The school system is very good at making you scared to challenge authority.

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