Who were the real sophomores in the Katie Sierra case?

SUMMING up the Katie Sierra case, a friend of mine put it well: "They call them sophomores for a reason."

Sierra was a sophomore when, in the shadow of 9/11, she tried to start an anarchy club at Sissonville High School and wore T-shirts with handwritten slogans decrying the war against Afghanistan.

Her approach may have been sophomoric. But she was, after all, a sophomore.

But as her civil rights trial against the school wraps up, it's becoming more and more clear that Sierra was a small part of the problem. The real problem was Principal Forest Mann's and other school officials' reaction.

And they don't have the excuse of being sophomores.

Mann listened to a student who claimed Sierra's shirts had inflammatory statements like, "America should burn," "I hope Afghanistan wins the war," and "America is a dumb country." Mann passed on those statements to the newspaper. And those statements led to most of the disruption in the school.

There was just one problem: Those statements weren't on any of Sierra's shirts. Jacob Reed, the student who...