Paper Gun

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Paper Gun Suspension

Paper Gun Costs Newport News Student 2 days at Home
Stephanie Barrett Newport Daily Press
11/02/00

A 12-year-old Dozier Middle School student will return to school Monday after being suspended for having a paper gun.

The seventh-grader, Bruce Cruz, learned from a classmate on Tuesday how to make a gun out of paper. It was the end of the school day, and they were waiting for the school buses to pick them up.

The gun is "real easy" to make, Bruce said. It's like making a paper airplane. All he had to do was fold two pieces of paper about six times. The paper gun is easily converted into the shape of a boat or plane, he said.

To school officials, it fit under a policy that says a student will not possess "an instrument or device that resembles or looks like a pistol, revolver or any type of weapon not capable of propelling a missile."

Dozier's assistant principal suspended Bruce for 10 days.

On Friday, after hearing from Bruce's mother, the principal dropped the suspension to two days. School officials would not comment on the specifics of Bruce's case other than to cite the school system's policy.

The paper gun got into Bruce's backpack on Tuesday night, after he decided to show his new trick to a family member. He took out an already-made gun crafted from yellow loose-leaf paper and then constructed his own using white notebook paper.

He tossed them both into his backpack and forgot about them.

While in class Wednesday morning, the two paper guns fell out of his backpack when he opened it to get a book. Bruce reached down to pick them up off the floor, and his teacher noticed. The teacher took them from Bruce and said nothing.

"I thought he was going to throw them away," Bruce said.

Bruce went to his second-period class, during which a security guard came to escort him to the school office.

Three other seventh-graders who also had learned to make a paper gun were taken to the office, too. Bruce said the school's assistant principal told the students he was considering giving them three weeks of detention and calling each of their parents to discuss the issue.

School system spokeswoman Michelle Morgan would not say what punishment the other students received.

Later in the day, Bruce said, he was called back to the office to find out he was being suspended for 10 days. Five of the suspended days would be out of school, and the other five would be in school.

Bruce served the first day of suspension at home on Thursday.

"I completely disagreed with this punishment," said Eva Cruz, Bruce's mother.

On Thursday, she called Dozier to share her feelings with the assistant principal, who recommended she write an appeal to the principal. Cruz did. Bruce has never been in trouble before, she said.

School system policy on devices that look like guns gives examples such as a cap pistol or water pistol. The length of the penalty for possessing look-alike guns can vary.

"In a case where a middle school student would be in possession of something that resembles or looks like a firearm, the level of the disciplinary action an administrator could take would be anywhere from intervention to expulsion," Morgan said.

Intervention can be anything from a student meeting with a counselor to a student and parent developing a contract that identifies ways to improve the student's behavior, Morgan said.

Cruz recognized the school rules, but she said Dozier's assistant principal should have considered the specifics of her son's case.

"My main thing is the 10 days," she said. "He didn't point this at anything. It fell on the floor. He didn't use it. He wasn't playing with it."

One or two days would be more reasonable, she said. By Friday afternoon, it appeared the school's principal agreed with her. Cruz got a call from a school secretary, who said the principal had reviewed her appeal and said Bruce could return to school on Monday. He would only have to serve two days of suspension.

"I want to be at school because I want to learn," Bruce said. "I don't want it to go on my student record."

Morgan would not speak directly to Bruce's case but said, "If one sanction is replaced with another, then that is the sanction that would appear on the student's record."

Cruz, however, plans to ask the principal on Monday that the two days of suspension be cleared from Bruce's record. If that doesn't happen, she will urge that his record at least describe the kind of look-alike gun that led to his suspension.