Unruly Boys
But How To Punish Them
By Daniel Muniz

Seventh graders Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison of Patton Middle school in McMinnville Oregon participated in a game called "Slap Butt Day" in which these two boys ran around slapping the rear-ends of middle school girls. Some girls didn’t mind and even felt that butt-slapping was nothing more than a form of hello. However, other girls didn’t see it that way and that is where the school administration stepped in.

Not only is physical contact like butt-slapping a violation of the McMinnville Public School District policies, but like in many other districts across the country, they view this kind of contact more as a sexual offense. For generations, our education system tended to view such as incidents as horseplay that didn’t warrant any kind of punishment. As a result, many boys had free reign on how they could touch and harass girls.

But times have changed.

Today, the same conduct by adult men in the workplace could get someone fired and rightly so. For too long, boorish behavior was tolerated even in very professional work environments. Such awareness has filtered from the office all the way down to our education system which is a tremendous improvement from the past. The adage of “boys will be boys” is slowly fading away as schools clamp down on this kind of behavior. So adhering to the policy of the McMinnville Public Schools, both boys were suspended for five days.

But what happened next becomes a bit murky.

The local police intervened and slapped handcuffs on the boys and arrested them. They were initially charged with felony sex abuse but it was reduced to five misdemeanor sex abuse and five misdemeanor harassment charges. The boys are now staring at 10 years of juvenile detention and both of them would have to register as for a lifetime as sex offenders. So essentially, their lives are pretty much ruined.

The type of reactions about this incident runs the gamut from outrage about the severity of the punishment to that these boys got what they deserved. As for me and as well as for other “law and order” types, it is really a mixed bag. I agree that the punishment is far too severe for these boys but I firmly disagree with the viewpoint of a father of one of the boys, Scott Mashburn, who states:

"We'd all be in jail if everyone got arrested for this kind of stuff."

Source: The Oregonian Staff

It is exactly that kind of “Good Ole Boy” attitude that got his son in trouble in the first place and it is exactly that type of mentality that created sexual harassment in the workplace. It is time for boorish behavior to come to an abrupt end everywhere including in our education system.

For adults, if it happens out on the streets or in the office, a woman ought to call the cops and the offender should get arrested. Grabbing the rear-end or breast or anywhere else of a woman without her consent is wrong and the perpetrator needs to be punished by our legal system.

But the real question lies with what to do with juveniles. Although conduct like this cannot be tolerated, I feel that there are some gradations involved.

For instance, in elementary school, boys do not comprehend concepts like “sexual harassment” but they know what cooties are. Suspension is far too severe for kids that are that young but they should still be disciplined and counseled about what is and what isn’t acceptable but it would be ridiculous to involve the police.

Now that a child is old enough for middle school, things change. A five day suspension from school is appropriate punishment but for the legal system to involve itself at the level that the city of McMinnville Oregon did is outrageous. That doesn’t mean that a kid should be off the hook because he is now old enough to be charged with a crime but it should be nowhere near the gravity of having to be registered as a sex offender or spending years in juvenile detention.

It is a serious offense and it should be treated as such but not to the lengths that the District Attorney in McMinnville took it to although that is the fault of the legal system. Perhaps at the very most, there should a special type of misdemeanor where a kid will spend a night in juvenile detention and that should be it. In other words, it ought to be a preventative measure intended to teach a lesson instead of ruining a kid’s life.

Now what about high school?

At this stage, I don’t have much sympathy and I feel that teenagers at this age should be charged and tried as an adult. What may have been questionable at middle school is now serious business in high school. Maybe the book shouldn’t be thrown at a teenager for the first offense but it is still a serious crime.

And that is where the awareness ought to be monumental. Our education system needs to be blunt about sexual misconduct and explicit in explaining the consequences that could follow.

What the law is doing to Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison is indeed ludicrous but their conduct is equally outrageous and I do not condone the “boys will be boys” mentality because what they did was totally inappropriate. However, it is very narrow-minded to apply a “one size fits all” solution to sexual misconduct. Norms are evolving and it will be years before we reach a middle ground and consensus in meting out age appropriate punishment.

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