When a group school project was completed, Dontadrian Bruce’s biology teacher asked students to pose with their Lego double helix assignment. Bruce, 15, made a hand gesture with his thumb, index finger, and middle finger up and his palm facing forward with a smile. The next school day, Bruce was summoned to the Olive Branch High school principal office, where he was immediately suspended for signaling a gang sign.
“He’s a good child,” Janet Hightower, the teen’s mother said. “I know what he does 24 hours a day. If he leaves home and goes two houses down, he’s gonna text me and let me know.”
Bruce, who has never been in trouble beforehand, is an A and B student. He declares he was throwing up the number three, the number of his Conquistadors football jersey, citing all the kids do it in practice. Unbeknownst to the teenager, his hand signal is affiliated with the Chicago based gang, the Vice Lords, who has a dominant presence in Memphis, which is 20 miles north of the school. Bruce attended a disciplinary hearing where his fate was decided, “indefinite suspension with a recommendation of expulsion,” citing the zero tolerance rule.
The zero tolerance rule originated with the Gun Free Schools Act of 1994, designed to decrease escalating gun violence in schools. The act calls for immediate suspensions and expulsions in spite of first time offenses and minor cases. In the last four decades, school suspensions have risen 40 percent, with 90 percent of cases non-violent.