DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Mich. – A Michigan honor roll student is suspended for the remainder of the school year after she was caught with a pocket knife at school.

Atiya Haynes told the media her grandfather gave her a 3.25-inch pocket knife for protection in her Detroit neighborhood, and she put the weapon in her purse and forgot about it.

But during a September football game at Annapolis High School the senior was searched along with other students in a school restroom after someone reported the facility smelled of marijuana. A school official discovered the knife, and Haynes was initially expelled under the state’s zero tolerance policy for weapons on school grounds, CBS reports.

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“I was really taken aback; like a mix of shock, because I’d forgotten that it was in there,” Haynes said. “Honestly, it just left my mind; like about two days after he’d given it to me, it kind of left my mind.”

Haynes appealed her punishment to the Dearborn Heights Board of Education with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and school officials reduced her sentence to a suspension through the end of the year, according to the news site.

District officials allowed Haynes to continue her coursework online, so she could graduate on time, but the 17-year-old doesn’t “believe the punishment fits the crime at all,” she told CBS.

“Even when (school officials) discovered the pocket knife, and I was shocked about the entire situation, I didn’t expect it to go this far whatsoever,” Haynes said.

Haynes’ mother, Guisa Bell, told Slate.com the issue isn’t over yet.

“I think they honestly thought in their mind, ‘this is the punishment,’ ‘OK, goodbye’ and they thought we would just leave this alone. I don’t think they were expecting us to fight this,” Bell told the news site.

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The incident occurred Sept. 26, and the local community has rallied behind the teen, an advanced placement student with a 3.0 GPA and dreams of attending Howard University, Bell said.

Slate reports that Michigan law’s definition of zero-tolerance dangerous weapons includes brass knuckles, chins, and knives longer than 3 inches. The law requires officials to expel students who violate the law from not only their school, but all schools in the state.

“The student’s only option becomes ‘alternative schools,’ which are campuses designed for ‘disruptive or dangerous’ students,’” Slate reports. “A 2013 research paper ‘Reconsidering Alternatives’ found on overwhelming correlation between these alternative schools and their students ending up in prison, often called the ‘school-to-prison pipeline.’”

At the recent board meeting, Haynes and Mark Fancher, an attorney for the ACLU, argued for an exemption to the rules, but Annapolis principal Dan Scott and vice principal Cheryl Howard both recommended removing Haynes from school, Slate reports.

“I’m not a bad kid at all,” Hayes pleaded, according to the news site. “I’ve seen so many statistics in my life of what not to be and I try so hard not to go down that path and for something like this to affect what I’m trying to be. … And this is an issue that is not just affecting me it’s something that’s nationwide.

“No-tolerance policies are unholistic and very, just, unjust. It doesn’t give a chance to explain or acknowledge circumstances,” she said.

Haynes, whose mother immigrated to the U.S. from Ecuador at age 6, told CBS her plans to attend college and live the American Dream is especially important to her family, and she doesn’t plan on letting the recent episode ruin her life.

But the teen lives in Detroit and attends more affluent Dearborn Heights schools through school choice, which means she lives in a different world than many of her classmates – one rife with violence – and shouldn’t be punished for taking precautions, Haynes told board members at the recent meeting.

“I don’t live in this neighborhood. I don’t have the same reality as a lot of kids in this neighborhood have,” she said. “And you can find that a lot of kids in Dearborn would not have a pocketknife, they would not need a pocketknife because that’s not their reality. I don’t think I should be punished for that.”

She’s also well aware of how the misunderstanding could drastically change her life trajectory.

“A lump sum of students who face expulsion from school are sent back to their reality of poverty, angst, unhappiness, and neighborhoods filled with negative influence,” she wrote in a letter to board members cited by Slate.

“Many people who are unnecessarily expelled because of the No-Tolerance Policy become another statistic, get behind in their studies, drop out, and commit crimes in their community.”