Adults on the street are allowed the right to self-defense if they are attacked, but newly proposed legislation would make that true for students on school campuses as well.

The student self-defense bill would eliminate the notion of zero-tolerance and allow students to fight back in defense of themselves or to step in and fight in defense of a fellow classmate without fear of punishment.

Lawmakers will have the chance to hear the bill for the first time today (Wednesday 2/20/13) when it goes to the Senate education committee.

 

Present law enumerates various conduct violations for which a public school student may be suspended, one of which is two or more students initiating a physical attack on an individual student on school property or at a school activity, including travel to and from school. This bill changes the foregoing basis of student suspension by applying it to any situation where one or more students initiates a physical attack on an individual student on school property or at a school activity, including travel to and from school.

This bill also specifies that a student may be excused from disciplinary action if the student is determined, after an investigation, to have acted in self-defense under a reasonable belief that the student, or another to whom the student was coming to the defense of, may have been facing the threat of imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury, which the student honestly believed to be real at that time.

 

 

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