A student at Winston Churchill High in Lethbridge was suspended last week for selling uncut Pepsi out of his school locker. The student, pushing his cans of sugary drink among his addicted classmates, argues that the punishment was too extreme, since he claims other people are selling actual drugs, which are against the actual law, as opposed to Pepsi which is merely against school policy.
The school policy, as it turns out, is a weird one. Soda is not banned from the premises, so long as it's diet soda. Full sugar isn't allowed, but artificial sweeteners are alright, even though artificial sweeteners tend to be controversial in terms of their health impact. It's a bizarre half-measure that suggests the school wants to appear to be health conscious, while not actually doing much to be health conscious. Given that the school policy itself is a weak-kneed half-attempt to promote healthy drinking, you would expect that their enforcement would be equally half-hearted. Instead, they're serious about it, suspending a student for continuing to be the sugar man, the guy who distributes the sweet stuff.
Many schools have been trying to promote healthy eating in their students, which has always run into the barrier of students rather enjoying being as unhealthy as possible and young enough to not quite feel the full impact of poor decision making. Given that many schools do provide options for their students at lunchtime, it can be argued that they should at least attempt to push students into a healthier direction, especially since childhood obesity is becoming an increasingly serious issue. If a school is no longer going to sell things which don't provide nutritional value, then that's good for them. If they're going to outright ban anything that they believe circumvents their policies, it's a bit extreme and will definitely see resistance from students - especially in high school, as teenagers love meaningless rebellion - but it does at least have a message and a goal behind it.
The problem I have with Winston Churchill High is that their policy is arbitrary and strange, as though they wanted to appear to care about student health without actually doing something meaningful about it. Which makes it so strange that they decided to come down hard on the student who dared to sell full strength Pepsi. One could argue that he was just rising to meet a marketplace demand, and that this should be encouraged, but the same argument could be said of the drug-dealing peers he uses in his defense, so let's not go down that road. Instead, if the school wants some credibility in punishing him, they should get rid of the diet sodas as well, show some commitment in their nutrition policy.
I have no problem with a school enforcing its rules, provided the rules are sensible and consistent. Nutrition policy is one of those things which schools have been wrestling with for some time, so it's likely that we will see more cases like this in the future, and students will rebel against it for the sake of rebellion. That is even the case here, as the student admits part of his incentive at this point is profitable rebellion. The school simply lacks credibility until it actually goes full force into this nutrition policy, and is consistent in its bans, rather than picking and choosing what unhealthy options it likes.
