High schools are no stranger to student angst and rebellion; students are almost expected to act out.
Consequently, when said rebellion grows, so too do the consequences: warnings, detention, suspension and the godfather of punishment, expulsion.
Acts worthy of expulsion can include fighting, carrying illegal contraband, skipping class repeatedly or doing something that might put other students at risk.
Though expulsion remains on the periphery for any well-mannered student, for those special trouble-makers, its presence has kept delinquency relatively contained.
Expulsion isn’t meant to be abused as a disciplinary action, but rather to carry weight through its rarity, reserved only for the most dangerous violation.
However, in more recent times, the already small number of expulsions has dwindled.
Teenagers certainly haven’t become more amiable, so the shift in administrative disciplinary acts has to have come from somewhere.
The shift can be traced back to concerns that expulsions might disproportionately affect marginalized groups, as well as doing more harm than good in the long run.
Students of color, LGBTQ+ students and students who have special needs services face higher rates of out-of-school suspension.
Research shows these disparities exist even when accounting for differences in behavior. 9% of students with disabilities and 12% of black students were serially suspended in 2017-2018, with black, disabled students having the highest suspension rate of any demographic at a whopping 19%.
In response, administrations have made efforts to gear towards social support instead of direct and potentially misguided punishment.
With the removal of expulsion as a definitive form of punishment, there has been a gaping hole that has hardly been filled by expanded mental health awareness and more pressure on counselors.
The only potentially equivalent form of discipline is detention — staying after school hours after repeated infractions — but even then, it’s hard to enforce and easy to avoid.
Students have become more reckless, more careless and more negligent about how they approach behavior in school. Teachers have found that their students’ behavior can range from minor disruptions in class like talking too loudly to publicly broadcast fights between students.
There’s a growing population of students, even here at Van Nuys High School, who act in the wake of an unbalanced power dynamic between students and administrators.
But they cannot truly be blamed when a slap on the wrist can not equal the seriousness of growing acts of intolerance and unrest.
This speaks to a bigger issue, the center of which is not expulsion and its decline, but rather the question of what students are able to get away with.
There are surely justifiable arguments against using expulsion as a scare tactic in high school, but without a real alternative that carries weight, students will only continue to test the limits. Schools need consequences that are both fair and effective, not just the absence of harsh punishment.
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2025 print edition.
