Leonard Pitts on the Chicago Hazing incident: "But evidence of our failure to teach the children is found not just in the crime, but in the apparaent unwillingness of some students to shoulder responsibility for it." For example, one of the mothers, trying to get her daughter out of trouble, said the attack was something that just got out of hand. Isn't it interesting how we slip into the passive tense to avoid blame? She did not say her daughter got out of hand, but that the incident did, as if the incident was a living being. Sorry, ma'am, but your daughter acted badly and should be punished. She should be punished severely enough to make her not ever consider doing this again. I'm trying to picture the horror on my parents face when someone tells them I poured feces on my schoolmates. I wonder what military school they would have sent me to. Pitts is right. Parents need to model responsibility and teach it. When you mess up, you must take your lumps. In contrast, you heard this from, of all things, a professional athlete, recently. Shaq missed the team meeting and said he would take his lumps for it, not try to justify it. I like that.

Even more than taking responsibility, parents must teach their kids right from wrong. They must model it. They must teach it. They must enforce it. This is not a new concept. It just got lost in the last few years. The fact is, for all the talk of tolerance, many people are mean on a personal level. Their kids see that and learn it. There is very little tolerance, kindness, or politeness practiced today. There is a lot of passive agressive behavior. I watched my neighbor, who would never have the nerve to stand up to a threatening person, berate and harass the grocery store clerk. I know a co-worker, meek and mild at work, who gets behind the wheel and becomes a hostile maniac.

Rather than try to get her kid out of trouble, I suggest the mother allow the daughter to take her lumps. Then, set aside one night a week for the rest of the time she is home before leaving for college, and on that night spend the evening teaching her values and practicing them. Or the next time you see her, she'll be rioting in the street after her team loses a basketball game, burning and looting and hurting people.