A school board or any other governing body can set policy, but if it's bad policy, the board can rethink the matter and change its mind.

The Bismarck School Board overstepped its responsibility on April 28 by adopting a policy that in some circumstances could turn the school authority into a kangaroo court.

Starting next school year, a student's eligibility to participate in co-curricular activities can suffer if the student is involved with things such as smoking or drinking or drug using.

Note well: Involved, not necessarily doing the wrong thing. Being present in a place where violation of rules of the high school activities association takes place can get the student a six-week suspension from sports, speech, theater or a list of other activities. The school district's rationale is that if young people are present in a place where others are, for example, drinking beer, they just shouldn't be there.

A tipster can report to the school administration a student who was in the place, and report it anonymously. Or there's the option of snapping a digital image with a cell phone camera and posting a student's image on the Internet.

And here is a real piece of work in the policy: The school gives itself authority over what students do during the summer or during a season when an athlete's sport is not happening or when drama club isn't working on a production and a crew member is reported as having been smoking. The suspension can be ordered for when hockey or basketball begins. There's some hokum in the policy about the timing when two weeks of a suspension during an activity might happen.

It's hard to make sense of how it's supposed to work.

The school people do allow that if information comes from a nameless tattler, it's up to the administration to prove a student's infraction - even if it's a student's guilt by association by mere presence somewhere.

Is anyone giving thought to several of the principles of common law here? Shouldn't the burden of proof always be be on the authority? Yes, indeed.

The argument is weak that the policy would give parents a disciplinary tool. "Be good, or the school might find out, and you'll have to sit out of choir for a while."

School districts say over and again they don't want to be parents or cops.

Then don't.

The school district can and does say it will take circumstances into account. How generous. A violation, even a second offense that earns an 18-week suspension, will not follow a student's record to the next school year. How magnanimous.

Even if a school district shrinks from regarding itself as a court, it still must be just.

There have long existed avenues for school districts to withdraw or withhold a student's eligibility. The policy in question here goes too far.

The Bismarck board should put this one back on the agenda, then make it go away, or at least rethink the specifics. None of this, however, is to suggest that it's a good thing for students to smoke, drink, use drugs or be around those who are doing it.