Restorative Justice for Covington Catholic School Teens

So I am very reluctantly breaking my 30-day kindness and positivity challenge to share some of my thoughts on this incident.

First, I fully recognize that my response may have been very different had I been there.

I'm calling on everyone to help get this sorted out because we really need you. There are many lenses we can view this through and one thing I would like to mention is sometimes groups of people do stupid things together. This isn't an excuse but a reality.

None of us have any idea what was going through this young man's mind or the minds of the other youth that were there.

While this disgusts and infuriates me and stirs up feelings of wanting to kick this kids ass I know that what we need is use this as an opportunity for these young people to learn, and reflect on the outcome of their actions.

I won't comment on whether I think they should be suspended, expelled or face other consequences. I think the school should and the community should decide that.

Whatever the decision it can't be one dimensional as in just a "punishment".

I would invite all of us to look at more of a restorative justice model, in short, this model focuses on repairing the damage rather than just a punishment. The question is asked "who was hurt and what needs to happen to make amends"?

The process usually brings the transgressor(s) and those impacted by the actions together to address the wrongs and make amends.

It can be a very powerful model if used well. I hope that this is where this ends up.

Some other thoughts I have starts out with some questions, one is from multiple reports there were adults with this group of students, so I wonder where they were and what they thought was going on.

Two, will the rest of us use this as yet just another way to reinforce our own ideology, dig our heels deeper or bury our heads further, blaming political parties or leaders?

The truth is that this incident is a microcosm of the tribalism and lack of resiliency that plagues us. Too much to get into and would make for a very long post.

Three, what will the parents of these young people do? Will we hear he is such a good kid and would never do anything like this? Or he is such a good kid that made a pretty big mistake and he will make amends?

Four, will the school community take this an opportunity to learn and heal and repair the damage done or will it be Ala the Penn State scandal of years ago? Where the student body, alumni and faculty thought showing up for a football game and or turning on their TV to watch was more important then doing what they could to bring healing to the victims. Which really goes back to question number two.

I was raised Catholic and I know what I was taught and I remember the most important tenant being "love thy neighbor". I think these boys haven't internalized that yet.

I wonder what the response of all my patriotic, rule of law loving, freedom of speech advocate, veteran respecting, friends will be? What will you do? What will we all do?

For me the answer is pretty simple though it requires some hard work.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46935701

#restorativejustice