Ethics

I don't feel like I've had many experiences where my ethics have been called into question. I'm typically on the straight and narrow and don't cause much ruckus in any situation. However I remember once my freshmen year of high school the kid who sat next to me had his cell phone ring in the middle of science class. I don't know if cell phones are a huge deal in high school now as most kids over the age of ten have them, but when I was in high school you weren't even aloud to have one in the building, let alone ring in the middle of class. The teacher immediately freaked out and came over to the area where me and the guy whose phone rang were sitting. The teacher asked whose cell phone rang and at this time I actually didn't even have one yet. I, of course was not going to rat out the guy sitting next to me so all I said was, "it wasn't mine I don't even have one" but the guy also denied it being his. So the teacher said fine since you both won't tell me I'll write you both up and send you to the office. This made my blood boil as my number one annoyance is being blamed for something I didn't do. If I did something, I have no problem owning up to it, but I hate being blamed for something I didn't do. So at this point I politely told the teacher she shouldn't write me up as I didn't even have a cell phone and she was more than free to search my purse to verify that fact. All of my friends in the class even piped up and told the teacher I didn't have a cell phone because they knew I didn't. However she still insisted on writing me up. Basically she wanted to get me because I was not going to tell on the guy whose phone it actually was. By this point I was pretty mad so I proceeded to call this particular lady a crazy (insert explicit word here) then she said she would write me up a second time for calling her a name. At that point I didn't even care and just stormed down to the office with my two write up slips. Down at the office they told me to bring my parents to school with me in the morning so we could discuss the matter. The next day roles around and I come to school with my parents. We had a meeting with the vice principal who was very cool about the whole thing. My parents told the vice principal I didn't even have a cell phone and they didn't blame me for getting mad the way I did over the situation. The vice principal said she was sorry they had to come in for something I didn't even do and that this particular teacher had been a little write up crazy over cell phones in the past few weeks. She also stated that the teacher did have the right to search my purse and should have done so to confirm that I did not have a cell phone. The vice principal did say I should try to handle the situation better next time and not call the teacher a name. In the end nothing went on my record, the teacher was pretty much in the wrong. The only bad thing that came of it was my parents were inconvenienced by having to come to my school before going to work to discuss me getting in trouble for something I didn't do. Looking back eight years later I still think that teacher lady was crazy and she obviously didn't handle the situation properly but the way the vice principal handled it was the right thing in my opinion.