I understand the idea behind not wanting kids in school groping on each other. It is not why they are in school. But teenage girls giving each other a hug goodbye is not a sign of sexual activity. It’s normal. But in this St. Louis school, it’s worth two days suspension:

Megan Coulter, an eighth-grade student at Mascoutah Middle School, was hugging her friends goodbye after school Friday when vice principal, Randy Blakely, saw her and told her she would receive two after-school detentions.

Blakely had previously warned Coulter that she was in violation of the school’s policy on public displays of affection after she was seen hugging a student at a football game.

The school’s policy says that “displays of affection should not occur on the campus at any time.”

There are really two problems here. One is this idea that affection is a bad thing. There isn’t anything wrong with hugging someone goodbye. Grabbing someone’s butt while you are sticking your tongue down their throat, see, that’s a problem. But rather than create the distinction, the school has created this idiotic zero tolerance program so school officials don’t have to think. And this is the result.

The other problem I have is this girl not being allowed to show affection at a football game. I don’t know about you, but that seems a bit of a reach to me. This is a public event, and while it might have been on “campus,” it wasn’t disrupting classes or causing a scene in the hallway. I mean, how far does this go? Should the kids learn to be cold and unfeeling to one another? No emotions, kids. Stop caring about one another.

Another example of this kind of thinking, a student was discipled for hugging a friend who’s parent had died:

“When I went through school, I hugged my friends,” said Lea Muir. Her daughter was given detention Monday at Prattville Junior High School. She called it an overreaction.

“It’s a little bit extreme, I think.”

But according the Autauga County School System’s code of conduct, “inappropriate public displays of affection, including but not limited to embracing and kissing” are not allowed.

And Autauga County isn’t the only one. Just last week, a school in Illinois disciplined a student for the very same thing. And a South Dakota student got in trouble for holding hands with a friend.

“It was made to be something ugly and it wasn’t,” Muir said.

She says the hug wasn’t meant to be sexual. She says her daughter was consoling a male friend who recently lost a parent.

“What’s it going to come to next?,” she asked. “You can’t high five or touch anybody? You can’t brush by someone in the hallway?”

Exactly. This will solve all the problems. Rather than teach the student what is acceptable and why, schools just ban all forms of public affection. And then wonder why kids are so cold these days.