Just when I think the zero tolerance rules in public schools can't get any more idiotic, this story hits the net:

Fairfax County middle school student Hal Beaulieu hopped up from his lunch table one day a few months ago, sat next to his girlfriend and slipped his arm around her shoulder. That landed him a trip to the school office.

Among his crimes: hugging.

All touching -- not only fighting or inappropriate touching -- is against the rules at Kilmer Middle School in Vienna. Hand-holding, handshakes and high-fives? Banned. The rule has been conveyed to students this way: "NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!!!!!"

Do they really want a generation of children that views all touching as something wrong? Do they really want a student body in which no one ever feels the comforting touch of a friend? This is verging on child abuse.

Why, you may wonder, would they do this?

Deborah Hernandez, Kilmer's principal, said the rule makes sense in a school that was built for 850 students but houses 1,100. She said that students should have their personal space protected and that many lack the maturity to understand what is acceptable or welcome.

And now they'll never learn to understand. The stupidity is mind-boggling. Does Principal Hernandez plan to avoid mentioning algebra because the children don't understand it? Gosh, if only there were some place—some sort of institution perhaps, staffed by people with special training—where young people could learn basic knowledge about how to survive in our society...

"You get into shades of gray," Hernandez said. "The kids say, 'If he can high-five, then I can do this.' "

Yeah, because college degrees in Education just don't prepare teachers to deal with questions that tricky.

Dr. Helen puts it this way:

This no touch rule seems wrong in so many ways, I don't know where to begin. I used to think schools were becoming like prisons, but honestly, prisoners have more rights. As one parent so aptly put it in the article, "how will you teach students right from wrong?" Indeed, how? For, if every behavior is seen in terms of black and white, how will kids learn where the boundaries are? Physical touch, along with adult guidance teaches kids where the boundaries are, no touching at all teaches them that normal expressions of behavior are aberrant--or that they have to sneak behind the backs of those in authority to get or show affection. What kind of lesson is that to teach?

The comments at Dr. Helen's blog are pretty interesting. It's amazing how many people make references to science fiction stories about dark future distopias. It's that bad.

John Ruberry, the Marathon Pundit, just did some actual reporting about the veterans' scholarship scandle at the University of Illinois.

This didn't sound like much of a story when I first heard about it. The University of Illinois had offered 110 scholarships to Illinois veterans for the night MBA program in downtown Chicago. A bunch of veterans were accepted and received confirmation letters. Later, however, the University cancelled a lot of those scholarships, accepting only 37 of them.

Some people seemed to be trying to spin this into an example of anti-military attitudes in academia, but having worked at a university for a while, it sounded to me like a typical foul-up. The academic side of academia works best when it is very decentralized, with each department making staffing and curriculum decisions on its own. The administrative work, however, requires rigorous standards and careful attention to detail, and departments get themselves into trouble when they try to cut corners. It sounded like the department that runs the night MBA program had promised something that the rules wouldn't allow it to deliver.

Now that John Ruberry has delved into the story a bit, including an interview with one of the principles, it's sounding a lot shadier than I thought:

What happened next is shocking. Ghosh, DeBrock, Admissions Dean Sandy Frank and Ikenberry decided to take matters into their own hands. So they got a copy of the admissions database from the Executive MBA program, studied it, and in an ex post facto manner, put in new procedural deadlines for the completion of application materials in order to reduce the number of military veterans in the program.

They basically looked at military candidates' application data and came up with new deadlines that they knew military candidates hadn't met. Sort of like betting on a horse a couple days after the race...or moving the goalpoast before a field goal attempt.

Read the whole thing.

...this happens:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that military recruiters must have the same kind of access as other employers coming onto campus to give out information and conduct job interviews, if the campus receives federal money. Most campuses rely on some share of the $35 billion the government channels each year to higher education.

The law that blocks this funding is known as the Solomon Amendment, and it has become a point of contention for many law schools. Here's a brief history of the Solomon Amendment that I found at a protest site:

In 1995, Congress passed the first Solomon Amendment, denying schools that barred military recruiters from campus any funds from the Department of Defense. The next year, Congress extended the law's reach to include funds from the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health & Human Services. In 1999, legislation shepherded by Rep. Barney Frank removed financial aid funds from the federal monies potentially affected by the Solomon Amendment. Defense Department regulations proposed in 2000 and formally adopted in 2002 exponentially toughened the law by interpreting it to require revocation of federal grants to an entire university if only one of the university's subdivisions (its law school, for example) runs afoul of the law. In 2005, Congress amended the law to explicitly state that military recruiters must be given equal access to that provided other recruiters.

In a sane world, this would be a stupid law. Presumably, these schools are receiving federal money for a reason. Either they are providing services to the government, such as research or program management, or the money is being given to them to serve a public purpose such as educating the people of this country. The point is, the schools are receiving money because the government needs something that they can provide.

The government's need for the school's services doesn't go away just because the school stops allowing military recruiters on campus, so it doesn't make sense to stop buying that service. If the government still needs whatever it's paying the school to do, then it should keep paying the school, otherwise it should stop. Recruiting has nothing to do with it.

That would be in a sane world. In our world, a lot of schools receive money as a blatant handout by politicians trying to gain support re-election. The schools ought to expect to find a few strings attached.