OK, Miss, Drop Those Fries

By Crispin Sartwell

The Post reported last week that 12-year-old Ansche Hedgepath was busted for possession of french fries in the Tenleytown/AU Metro station, where consumption of food products is strictly verboten. The seventh-grader was handcuffed, searched, and taken to a detention center by Metro police, then sentenced to community service and counseling. Officials defended their roundup of dangerous underage snackers as part of their "zero tolerance" policy, and claimed that they are required by law to cuff and detain all juvenile offenders.

Meanwhile nearby at Alice Deal Junior High, the administration is reported to be considering suspending Ansche or removing her from the jump-rope team. Seems that things haven't changed that much since my days at Deal thirty years ago, when I was suspended for publishing an underground newspaper.

But at least that was a comprehensible oppression, the kind that is traditional in dictatorships and public school systems. What's happening to Ansche, on the other hand, is the sheer arbitrary application of mindless authority.

Up here in York County, Pa., a first-grader named Timiere Crosby was expelled last year for bringing a weapon to class. The weapon? A pair of nail clippers that he had never even removed from his backpack. Another student reported the situation to the teacher. She had, she said, no choice but to report it to the principal: that's the policy. The principal had no choice but to report it to the superindendant. Policy. The school board in turn had no choice but to expel Timiere, though public outrage eventually reduced the sentence to a suspension.

In truth, the process could have been stopped at any point at which any of these slaves of policy was illuminated by a glimmer of common sense or kindness. Instead, they humiliated a small child and his family for no reason at all.

Perhaps you recall the decision in September of the International Olympic Committee to strip all-around gymnastics winner Andreea Raducan of her gold medal for using Sudafed, a decongestant which was given to her by her team doctor for a cold..

"We really had no choice [except] to do what we did," said IOC medical commission member Donald Catlin. "We had to do what we did because it was part of the new IOC code."

Rules are little marks on pieces of paper. Whether one obeys them is always a choice, and they are never an excuse for doing bad things to people. When your rules demand child abuse, simply grin and defy them.

The officer who cuffed Ansche Hedgepath and all the people who have pursued her punishment are personally responsible for their cruelty, no matter what the rules say and no matter what these people say about the rules. This should have ended with the confiscation of Ansche's fries and it could have ended at any stage of the process.

No doubt these officials regard the "counseling" that Ansche Hedgepath will undergo as an opportunity for her to reflect on her actions and on the need to obey the rules. I picture them forcing her, say, to write compositions deploring what she did and reconciling herself to authority. But deep inside I suspect little Ansche will be reflecting instead that authority is arbitrary and illegitimate, if not downright insane: that it is something to be evaded or destroyed.

And that, indeed, is the true lesson of her experience, as it is of Timiere's and Andreea's. Indeed, it's a lesson that these various policemen, school administrators, and officials seem to be intent on teaching all of us.

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