Putting the 'Zero' Into Zero Tolerance

From the you-have-to-read-it-to-believe-it department, comes this story in The News-Press of Southwest Florida:

Sixteen-year-old Ryan Richter got kicked out of school Monday morning for a stick-figure drawing that another student thought was a violent threat.

Richter, a LaBelle High School sophomore, sketched a figure shooting another figure. He did the sketch in a recent geometry class and passed it along to a friend and thought nothing else of it.

The classroom doodling, however, got him suspended for a week and as of Monday?s disciplinary hearing, got him kicked out of LaBelle High and recommended for a 45-day stint in Hendry County?s alternative high school.

Based on today's lunatic standards, the material in my early-'80s high school notebooks would probably qualify me for the death penalty in a dozen states.