Stop appalling, criminal student behavior: Drop ‘equity’ and bring back zero tolerance

Appalling. Disgusting. Horrendous. No thesaurus holds enough words to convey the awfulness of the newest AI-generated trend: Teenage boys creating deepfake nude pictures of their female classmates and sharing them with friends in the lunchroom and on social media.

The mainstream media has picked up on this development, quoting understandably outraged parents and noting energetic responses from police and school officials. Accused minors have been arrested, and, in one recent case in Beverly Hills, expelled from public school. The New York Times quoted that district’s superintendent saying, “It’s something we will absolutely not tolerate here.”

He’s absolutely right, of course. But one would have to be blind not to notice the contrast with most other school disciplinary procedures today. In the name of “equity,” schools have created permissive environments in which students have learned there are no consequences for their actions. Now the administrators are reaping what they have sowed, and they are rightly horrified by it.

The boys who perpetrated these crimes had ample reason to expect they would not be held accountable for their actions, given the widespread push against traditional school discipline currently in vogue. For more than a decade, liberals have argued for a focus on “root causes” and “restorative justice” instead of personal responsibility and clear penalties for classroom disruption. It has even gotten to the point where school officials look the other way when students cuss out their teachers, vape marijuana in the bathrooms and brawl in the hallways.

When deviancy has been defined down this far, why wouldn’t students expect to get away with digital sexual assault?

Finally, even committed social justice warriors are blanching in the face of cruel, misogynistic boy behavior. It took something this awful for them to stop demanding we all stand back and instead ponder the “root causes” of this deviant behavior. Incredibly, this is one case in which no one is forcing the victimized girls to sit in a “restorative” circle with the perverts who stole their dignity.

As for root causes, theologians would point to human nature and the capacity of evil to penetrate the human heart. Scientists might highlight under-developed pre-frontal cortexes. Cultural commentators might blame bad parenting. After all, how does anyone reach 15 years of age without the iota of empathy needed to keep them from treating their peers so horribly?

But today’s myopic focus on “root causes,” in addition to being a logical fallacy, will not stop disruptive and even criminal behavior in schools by today’s perpetrators. Consequences, on the other hand, will.

Maybe outrage over these despicable actions will lead some equity advocates to rethink things and return to zero tolerance for other forms of serious misbehavior. For the sake of children and our education system, we can only hope.

Michael J. Petrilli is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute