Hugging Ban Proposed In Maryland School District To Improve Child Safety In Wake Of School Shootings

A hugging ban has been proposed by a Maryland school district in an attempt to ensure student safety.

The hugging ban is one of the new safety rules proposed for St. Mary's County schools in Maryland in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting in December. School officials have said that they want to cut down on "inappropriate touching" in school, starting with hugging.

The hugging ban proposal states that visitors to the school would not be allowed to hug the children.  Specifically, other parents would be forbidden from coming in and hugging children that are not their own.

"The fact is that we want to make certain our teachers and our staff are trained in what's defined as the appropriate touching of a student versus inappropriate touching of a student," explained Superintendent Michael Martirano.

The hugging ban is part of a series of new regulations has been developed by a committee of parents, principals and school staff members. The local PTA president Trisha Post said the proposal is still a work-in-progress.

Post added that the rules could be reworded better, saying, "We're looking at gathering community input to say how you feel about this. The feedback we're getting is if the student wants to initiate the hug then they're really comfortable with that. Nobody wants to be the hugging police in St. Mary's County."

"We're talking about visitors or other people in school that may not be incredibly familiar with the child in question. We've had some parental feedback that [hugging] makes some parents uncomfortable," she explained.

In addition to the ban on hugging, the committee has proposed a new system that requires visitors to check in by computer and have their pictures taken. While in the building, the visitors must also wear an identification badge so officials know they have permission to be there.

The committee also proposed a ban of homemade birthday cupcakes.

Predictably, some members of the community are upset by the ban.

School board member Cathy Allen said that the proposal is too strict. She said, "The idea that you can't go into a school and be hugged by a child, or go in to have lunch, or be out on the playground and that you can only push the swing for your child and for no one else" is unacceptable.

The school district hasn't yet passed the ban; it is still under review. If it were passed, the hugging ban would go into effect for the remainder of the 2013 school year.

After the school shootings that have seemed to become ever more widespread, schools in Oregon, Florida, New Jersey and New York have already implemented bans on hugging.