Expel kids for fighting? Authorities say yes after the melee at an Illinois football game.

• Position: Opinion - Brief Article

YES

We have all seen the video of the fight that took place in the bleachers at the football game in Decatur, Illinois, on September 17, 1999. This was no innocent shoving match, if there is such a thing. This was a melee that endangered everybody in the stands, including small children. As a result, six students were expelled for two years (a seventh left school voluntarily). Some considered the punishment too harsh, so the school board lessened the expulsions to the rest of the school year and allowed the students to attend alternative education programs. Seems reasonable to me.

But this wasn't enough for civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. March on Decatur, he screams, until these young men are back in their classrooms by the time winter break is over. To this, I can only politely ask, "Are you nuts?!?!"

We can't have parents, teachers, and clergy teaching children that violence is unacceptable, while role models such as Jackson very publicly teach them that there are no absolute standards for behavior, that there's an if and a but for every transgression. Real life doesn't work like that, and the sooner Jesse Jackson realizes that, the better off the children of Decatur and the rest of America will be. Without negative consequences to bad behavior, positive learning experiences can never happen.

--SHEPHERD SMITH President, Institute for Youth Development

NO

It goes without saying that our first priority has to be safety, and so in the case of weapons we must take a hard line. But what about fisticuffs or beer drinking or possession of a small amount of marijuana? In adolescence, shouldn't there be some room for missteps? Isn't that what the very...