ON DRUGS, DRESS CODES AND WHETHER SIZE MATTERS ON DI

THE REGISTER editorial board has checked, and the moon is not full. We
therefore have no explanation for several instances of overkill on the part
of two local governments and a middle school.

Let's start with 13-year-old Elizabeth Dover's celebrated pair of khaki
corduroy pants.

According to the teenager, she was pulled out of class during final-exam
week in December and told she could either be suspended for being out of
uniform, or have the rivets -- deemed illegal under the uniform code -- cut
off her pants. When she chose khaki mutilation, a female janitor escorted
her to a closet, where she undid the top two buttons of her pants and the
janitor took wire cutters to the rivets.

Rivets, it seems, are a dead giveaway that a child is trying to evade the
well-established no-jeans policy. But there are other, better ways of
handling a dress code violation.

A written warning to the youngster and her parents, a conference with her
parents, sending the girl home to change, after-school detention -- all of
these options would have riveted the Dover family's attention to the matter
without jeopardizing the girl's academic performance or humiliating her.

And on the subject of humiliation, just what was the point of Creola Police
Chief Mike Williams' surprise drug testing of city employees? That four
City Council members were told about it in advance, while the fifth council
member and Mayor Cleo Phillips were not, suggests some motivation on the
part of the police chief -- whose conflicts with the mayor have been well
publicized -- other than the desire to conduct a random and objective drug
screening.

Worse was Chief Williams' decision, after the first couple of tests, to
have someone stand in the restroom as some employees provided urine
samples. The city clerk says she was so unnerved by the procedure that she
was unable to comply.

Unless there was a reason to suspect drug use and a reason to suspect that
someone might try to foil the test, this seems a needless invasion of privacy.

Finally, there is the town of Dauphin Island's crackdown on the populace's
flagrant disregard of an ordinance requiring that house numbers be five
inches high. Not four inches. Not three inches, even though Dauphin
Island's building inspector said he could "plainly" see three-inch letters
from the street (the idea of the ordinance is to help locate the correct
address in an emergency).

Well over half the households and businesses on Dauphin Island received
$168 citations in the mail. Justifiably irate residents who descended on
Town Hall then learned they didn't actually have to pay the fine if they
got the right-size numbers.

Here's a common-sense approach to a valid public safety issue: If an
inspector can't clearly see the number of a house or business from the
street, send a polite letter inviting the occupant to come into compliance.

Too bad that common sense seems to be in short supply these days -- not
just on Dauphin Island but throughout the county.