Student Suspended from Senior Year for Hugging a Teacher

Winston Zeddemore 

Seventeen year old Sam McNair from Duluth,Georgia was looking forward to his senior year of high school. He was active in several sports and applying to colleges. Yet these plans are in jeopardy because of an incident that has gotten him suspended for the remainder of the school year. His crime? Hugging a teacher.

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The (female) teacher was offended by the gesture and reported him for what amounted to sexual harassment. The teacher claims McNair's lips touched her cheek and neck but the student insists it was "just an innocent hug".

At his disciplinary hearing McNair was sighted as having been warned previously by this teacher about her discomfort with his physical contact. There was also a history of previous disciplinary actions against McNair that was taken into consideration with the hearing boards decision. It is not clear whether those past indiscretions were related to the current charge.

McNair's mother is fighting the school system's punishment as way too harsh for what she sees as an affectionate gesture from a happy boy brought up in a loving environment where hugging is encouraged as normal behavior. She has established a petition on Change.org which (as of Monday)  had over 200 signatures to protest the severity of the disciplinary board's sentence.

This case is yet another example of the kind of "zero tolerance" offenses school systems across the nation have implemented and enforced. In a post Colombine era of fear, mixed with stories of sexual liaisons between students and teachers making the headlines, it is important to establish codes of conduct with consequences for breaking that code. But on the surface it seems that in a case like McNair's, the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. The punishment appears to outweigh the "crime".

This is not to put the blame on the teacher, whose right to a secure and safe work environment should be protected. But it would be interesting to know if this "good teacher" would tolerate the derailment of a student's academic future at the expense of an act of kindness, no matter how uncomfortable it made her feel.