I have a hard time having much sympathy for this boy too. I remember being in school and how wild and disrespectful some of the kids would get when they knew they were basically 'home free' and thought they could get away with some final act they would never have dared before. There is not a whole lot of repercussion a school can give at the end of the year a few days before a senior graduates. A kid would laugh at being suspended or put in detention. He wasn't punished by failing him and denying him a diploma, he just can't go to the ceremony. This boy must be about 18 and headed out into the adult world and he needs to take it seriously. Vandalism is vandalism, he messed with the school's property and legally if any lasting damage was done (even to just a lunch tray), they could have pressed charges. I'm willing to bet if the kid had shown remorse and apology and acted like an adult, things MIGHT have gone differently. Even if they hadn't, at least he would have owned up to responsibility and been the better person for it. I guess I just have little tolerance for things like that. And I don't think the school could really enforce something like community service or anything that isn't to do with the school itself. I think they did about the only repercussion that was available to them at that point. This wasn't a kid in grade school putting a frog in his teacher's desk, this was a young man about to graduate and enter adulthood.

Just how I see it.