Now get this: In 2017, three 14-year-odlCalifornia teens, two of whom, Holden Hughes and Aaron Hartley, were about to begin attending St. Francis High School, a Catholic private school in Mountain view, were modeling anti-acne medicinal face masks that involved smearing dark green goo on their faces. (One of the boys had severe acne and his friends put the stuff on their own faces in an act of support). The teen who wasn’t headed to the private school snapped a selfie because the boys thought they looked funny. A similar photo taken a day earlier indicated that they had tried white medicinal face masks as well. 

A student at St. Francis found the image online and uploaded it to a group chat in June 2020. Not only was the George Floyd Freakout in full eruption, but the photo was circulated on the same day that recent SFHS graduates had posted on Instagram a satirical meme pertaining to Floyd’s demise, so the school was “triggered.” The gloriously woke student who decided to publicize the greenface photo claimed that the teens were using blackface; “another example” of rampant racism at the school, he posted, and urged everyone in the group chat to spread it throughout the school community—you know, to cause as much anger, division and disruption as possible.

I can’t find the name of that charming kid. He’ll probably be Governor of California some day.

Soon after this seed was planted, the Dean of Students at St. Francis Ray called the Hughes’s and Aaron Hartley’s’ parents to ask them if they were aware of the photograph. They explained that the teens had applied green facemasks three years earlier, long before the non-racial Minnesota incident that had no demonstrable racial significance and definitely no relevance to blackface. The parents added that the teens’ use of the acne medication had “neither ill intent nor racist motivation, nor even knowledge of what “blackface” meant.”

Never mind. The parents were contacted again the same day and told their sons were not no longer welcome at the school. When one of the boys’ father again insisted that his son was not wearing blackface, Principal Katie Teekell responded that her decision was not based on “intent,” but “optics” and “the harm done to the St. Francis community.”

Well will you look at that! A pure Niggardly Principle violation! [The First Niggardly Principle: “No one should be criticized or penalized because someone takes racial, ethnic, religious or other offense at their conduct or speech due to the ignorance, bias or misunderstanding by the offended party.”]

Later that month, the school’s attorney told the school’s families that the photograph projected “disrespect was so severe as to warrant immediate dismissal.” The school also cited the dismissal of Hughes and Hartley to deflect a protest by some parents who claimed the “greenface” episode was evidence of “kids participating in blackface and thinking that this is all a joke.”

This week, four years after the two boys’ parents sued the school, a jury delivered a $1 million verdict against St. Francis, with both Holden Hughes and Aaron Hartley being awarded $500,000 each along with a reimbursement of their tuition for their three years attending teh school, for tuition, which was estimated to be $70,000 total for their three years attending the school. The verdict was based not on the First Amendment, as a private school isn’t legally required to allow free speech (though basic ethics should prevent the kind of wildly unjust punishment that took place in this case.) A California Supreme Court private universities and schools including religious institutions are legally obligated to give students receive notice of charges and a fair opportunity to respond before discipline is imposed.

Good. Nonetheless, I don’t understand how any institution, and the officials of any institution, could behave like Principal Katie Teekell did, and worse, state outright that the students were being not only expelled but tarred as racists not because of what they had actually done or intended to do, but because someone might wrongly assume that their actions were motivated by racism.

Who thinks like that? I know California is Ground Zero for woke mind rot, but is it that bad over there? So bad that adults–educators!— would self-righteously jeopardize two students’ reputation just to signal their virtue and contrived indignation at a racial incident that wasn’t a racial incident? Is the school full of brutal zealots like this? Is St. Francis not a horrible mutation, but typical of where the plague of presumed racism and progressive persecution is taking the nation’s society and culture?

Teekell still has her job. How can that be? Decent, responsible parents should be picketing to have her sent packing to one of those lucrative California’s fast food jobs, or else they should pulling their vulnerable students out of that school so they won’t end up as monsters.

I don’t understand this story.

Or maybe I don’t want to…

Coda: A note on our despicably unethical journalists… so far, all of the coverage of this story has been in local news media (that couldn’t avoid it), conservative news sources like Fox News and the New York Post, and websites like Reason. Huh! Why do you think the political and partisan Left’s mouthpieces don’t think this story is “newsworthy”? It couldn’t be because this is a perfect example of why supporters of Donald Trump have reluctatntly concluded that that extreme measures, and an extreme leader, is required to stop such cultural contagions…could it?