Who knew doing the right thing could get you in trouble??
Adrionna Harris never expected that kind of outcome after she saw one of her fellow students cutting themselves with a razor and decided to intervene! Instinctively she grabbed the razor away from the troubled student, and threw it in the trash!
GOOD!
The only problem is that the sixth grader goes to a middle school in Virginia Beach, Virginia, that must have a completely different definition of what the ‘right thing’ is! The school even had NO knowledge of what occurred until Adrionna told school officials the next day — and that’s when they immediately suspended her for ten days, and recommended that she’d be expelled.
That. Makes. No. Sense!!!
Here’s how they justified it: the reason for her suspension was for the brief amount of time that she held the razor blade.
The school has a “zero tolerance” weapon policy. Needless to say, Adrionna’s parents were upset when they heard what happened. Here’s what the mother said:
“I was shocked and surprised. I was very shocked that a student would get suspended for saving another child. The school system over-reached absolutely. Under the circumstances, she thought he would bleed out, as he was cutting himself, and there was no teacher in sight. It was a 911 situation, and there wasn’t time to find a teacher.”
Well, the story got picked up by the local media, and the school got blasted with complaints from everyone with a phone or a keyboard. School officials have officials have since lifted the suspension for the sixth grader, cleared her record, and are not mentioning expulsion any longer.
As for Adrionna, she said she would’ve done the same thing again, even if it meant the maximum punishment. She said:
├óΓé¼┼ôEven if I got in trouble, it didn├óΓé¼Γäót matter because I was helping him ├óΓé¼┬ª I would do it again even if I got suspended, yes.”
Hopefully this attention will lead the school to reach out to the person who was self harming themselves to begin, and get that student the help they deserve — and we hope it serves as a great lesson to those schools out there with strict policies to be thoughtful when enforcing them. This was OBVIOUSLY the wrong thing to do!
It’s crazy to think how much more mature Adrionna is than these school officials obviously are. Maybe she should be the one in charge!
[Image via WAVY.]
