From Yahoo! News (whole article):

Two hugs equals two days of detention for 13-year-old Megan Coulter. The eighth-grader was punished for violating a school policy banning public displays of affection when she hugged two friends Friday.

 
Wow. Remember middle school rules? They seem retarded now that we’re older, but at the time we had to put up with some serious bullshit.
 
Remember when you had to ask permission to go to the bathroom? Couldn’t wear a hat inside? Couldn’t drink a soda in class? And that isn’t even the half of it.
 
I know a lot of you can probably relate to this… At my middle school we had 35 minute lunch periods. The first 15 minutes were devoted to the Assistant Principal rambling on about policy and other stupid crap. We were not allowed to talk during this time, only to eat in silence. After the daily rhetoric, we had about 10 minutes where we could eat and talk freely. Of course, we had to stay seated at all times. Moving to a different table was forbidden, and sitting with another class was a serious offense. Oh and also if things got too loud, the AP would grab the mic again, tell us to shut up, and cut our “talk time” short. The last 10 minutes of lunch were essentially the same as the first 15. Sit in silence, quietly finish your lunch and dispose of all trash, and wait for your class to be called to exit the cafeteria. Talking at any time except the designated 10 minutes would result in detention. Changing tables, detention. Making eye contact with the AP, detention.  There was actually a wall in the middle of the lunch room where you would have to stand if you misbehaved, right in front of the whole school, for everyone to see. You’d stand there until the end of lunch, unable to finish eating.
 
In the morning, when we first got to school, we had to wait outside - rain or shine, warm or cold. They seriously would not let anyone into the building until precisely the minute homeroom started. If you pulled in front of my school in the morning, you would see 300 kids standing outside in little groups. If you wandered into a different grade’s designated waiting area, detention. A lot of kids got dropped off pretty early because of their parents’ work schedules, so it wasn’t uncommon for kids to be forced to wait outside for a good half an hour before school started. In the winter, this sucked.
 
We had lockers in middle school, just like we did in high school. The only difference was that, in middle school, we literally were not allowed to use them. I have absolutely no idea where my locker was, what it looked like, and definitely no idea what the combination was. I didn’t know then either because I couldn’t use it. We had to carry our lunches, coats, and all of our books with us all day. There were a few designated times when we were allowed to go to our lockers but I know we couldn’t before school or at lunch. That was detention. I guess it was only after school that we could use them. Anything we put in there had to stay for at least 24 hours.
 
My middle school had a program known as the Ingenuity Project. It was basically the “smart-kids track.” It emphasized math and science, and was meant to prepare you for those courses at the high school level. As bad as the school administrators were, the people that ran Ingenuity were a thousand times worse. When I was in sixth grade, Ingenuity had a policy that if you received below an 80 in a class, it was considered failing. So, yes, a C was failing. By the time I left they had raised it to 85, so that anything less than pure perfection was bordering on unacceptable. A great job was no longer great, it was expected. A good job was grounds for removal from the program. A poor job was 30 lashes.
 
And they wonder why 8th graders fuck with their teachers non-stop, pull the fire alarm every other week, and generally act like ignorant little shits. It’s probably because after 3 years of that Nazi horseshit, you go insane and want to kill everyone in the school.