Let Me See If I Get It. You Make a Mistake, But You Want the School District to Eat the Cost.

So I'm perusing CNN today. Ok, sidebar. Any of you who read these rants know that I'm something of a conservative. Can you "neocon"? Now back to today's rant. So I'm perusing CNN today and I see a story about a Florida high school student who apparently decided that she did not want to have her pantylines visible on school picture day. Her solution was to not wear any panties to school. I don't know if this is something she does frequently or if she only did it on this particular day. The article did not specify.

However, in a group photo that she was in for some club that I do not recall she is sitting in such a manner that there is a question as to whether you can actually see up her skirt to territory that should remain unknown to all except her mother and her future husband. Note I say "question". This is because the school administration believes that what we are looking at is not indecently exposed flesh but simply a shadow. However, the student is allegedly so humiliated that she hasn't returned to school since the yearbooks were handed out. Moreover, her mother is angrily demanding that all of the yearbooks be confiscated and new ones printed and passed out.

I have some thoughts on these demands...

First, wearing a skirt that isn't at least knee length while also going "commando" on school picture may not be in the top ten list of dumb things to do as a high school student, but the consequences of such a decision are certainly both probable and predictable. As in, "Duh!"

Second, since both mom and "victim" decided to go public on CNN with this little story, it would have been nice to get some indication of mom's disapproval with her daughter's indiscretion. Nope. Instead, we were treated with a mother's misplaced righteous indignation that the school would dare to leave these yearbooks in the hands of pubescent young men and woman which now apparently contains pictoral evidence of her daughters most intimate ... you get the idea.

Were I able to speak to mom, I would remind her that her daughter's own poor decision is what resulted in the questionable photo being taken. Had I found out that my high-school aged daughter had EVER gone to school without wearing the full complement of correct underclothing there would have been absolutely no question as to my displeasure.

Another thought that occurs to me is that yearbooks are pretty expensive. When I went to high school back in the late 1970's, they were twenty to thirty bucks apiece. They were printed on high-quality glossy paper. It took all year to make those year books. And when they get handed out, the American ritual is for the students to pass those books around to as many of their friends as they can to get a signature or little written token of their affection. It would cost several thousands of dollars to repeat the printing. Further, there is no way that the school is going to get all of those handed out copies back, with their precious signatures that some of these students will have no opportunity to collect again.

For this mother to DEMAND that the school confiscate those books and reprint them at public expense is a shockingly glaring example of just how "me" centric we have become.

This is a very tough learning experience for that young, indiscreet student. I hope that she recovers from it, learns from it and can move forward. But to be clear, for her family to make the demands that it is of the school administration and all of those students for what is clearly a bad decision on one student's part is selfish. It also fails to address the root cause of this problem, which is the belief by this student that it is acceptable to go to school in a short skirt without wearing underwear. Mom, do you have a comment on that?