Every time a student is suspended, the rumors start flying about what happened. “The cops came and got them!” “There was blood everywhere!” “The one kid almost got knocked out!”

I am well aware of this, as I was recently suspended for “fighting” for three days.

“A suspension is supposed to act as a deterrent to prevent students from

not following the code of conduct or to remove students from school if they have behaved in a way that is dangerous to themselves or others,” Assistant Principal Beth Guarriello said.

I personally don’t see, though, how suspension acts as a deterrent. How does the school benefit from sending students home for a few days, which is where students want to be anyway?

According to a study by Duke University, “suspended and non-suspended students perceive suspensions as an officially sanctioned school holiday.”

The explanation I got when I was in the office awaiting my sentence was that “you need to learn your lesson.” I definitely learned my lesson when I was eating Chick-Fil-A and watching Netflix while my peers were at school listening to teachers drone on and on about photosynthesis and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I did my homework, but I know of a lot of other students who wouldn’t have.

I’m not alone in my opinion on out-of-school suspensions.

“If I was suspended I would just play video games and go on social media,” freshman Carter Prokesh said.

“Suspensions don’t teach anything; I mean I can still fool around when I go home,” freshman Tim Colon said. “It’s not gonna teach kids anything. Just a break from school.”

In fact, the school has no control over what kids do when they are at home. I would liken my recent suspension to a five-day weekend.

This brings up an important point: why would the school send kids home with no supervision and call it a punishment? In-school suspensions might prove a more effective form of discipline.

“I agree with in-school suspensions,” freshman Nate Morris said, “but I’m questionable about out of school suspensions.”

Here’s the basic idea. You sit in the office all day with nothing but school work. No friends. No social time at lunch. Not even a lesson to pause the monotony of worksheets.

I can’t speak for all students, but in my mind, if in-school-suspensions were movies, they would be scarier than “The Human Centipede.” With this in mind, if the school really wanted people to learn a lesson, they would completely remove out-of-school suspensions and force students to deal with the horrifying reality of in-school suspensions.

The administration needs to face the facts that out-of-school suspensions are useless. With all the technology students have at their fingertips, the punishment aspect is almost nonexistent.

“I believe that in-school suspensions would be much more effective than out-of-school suspensions,” Mrs. Guarriello said. “In-school suspensions would allow students the time and place to complete the school work that they have missed with the support of school personnel, and it would also provide time for counseling.”

I don’t wish for anyone to get punished, but every now and then the time will come where a punishment is needed. If the school is going to punish a student, they should actually make the punishment worth something.