Bring Back Tar and Feathers For These School Administrators

Tar, feathers, and stocks.

There was a reason that these cruel punishments were put on people who engage in grievous antisocial behavior towards their fellow citizens. Some offenses are so grievous that the most just way to deal with them is public humiliation. It teaches a lesson to the offenders and serves as a stark reminder to others that cruelty to one’s fellow citizens will bring harsh punishments. 

Obviously, you don’t bring out the big guns for small violations of public order and decency, and the abuse of these punishments led to their abolition. Unfortunately, the result of eliminating cruelty by the public–a very good thing–is an increase in such cruelty by those who are inclined to spit in the public’s eye. 

People like this School Board, teachers, and school administrators, who bullied Middle-school girls into undressing in front of a male student. 

https://t.co/Dp5Ba0lPur

— Audra Worlow 🇺🇸 (@audrawrongspeak) March 15, 2025

Girls are, let’s face it, more vulnerable than boys, and no group of human beings is more self-conscious about their bodies than middle-school girls who are going through admittedly traumatic and confusing physical and emotional changes. That school officials would exacerbate the distress many girls feel at this vulnerable time to “accommodate” the desires of a confused young man is unforgivable. 

Illinois public school administrators tried to force a 13-year-old girl to change clothes in front of a biological male, in accordance with the district’s “inclusive” bathroom policy that allows transgender students to use whichever locker room corresponds with their chosen gender, the mother of the girl said at a Deerfield School District 109 School Board meeting on Thursday evening.

When Nicole Georgas’s 13-year-old daughter came home from Shepard Middle School on February 5, she was frightened and upset: A boy had been in the girl’s bathroom.

Georgas’s daughter was told by Deerfield administrators that because the male student identified as a female, he could use the girl’s locker room and bathroom, Georgas said. Although Georgas expressed to the school that the district was “in clear violation” of President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that restricts males from participating in female sports and using female changing rooms, her daughter’s teachers and principal reiterated that under direction from the district’s legal counsel, the male student could use whichever bathroom corresponded to his chosen gender.

Then, Georgas said, “the situation went from bad to worse.”

“A few days later, the male student was present in the girls locker room. Feeling violated, the girls made the choice to not change into their PE clothes with the biological male student present,” Georgas said at the meeting.

Administrators then supervised the locker room to ensure that all girls were changing into their physical education clothes without protest, Georgas claimed. District 109 Assistant Superintendent for Student Services Joanna Ford, Assistant Principal Cathy Van Treese, and Director for Student Services Ginger Logemann tried to force the girls to change in front of the male student, Georgas said; when contacted, the district and administrators did not respond to National Review‘s requests for comment.

I am perfectly willing to assume that the young man in this case is similarly confused and in need of counseling and accommodation. He, too, is suffering distress and in need of mental health treatment. The solution to this problem is not to destroy the well-being and mental health of every young woman around him. 

So the transgender parent says that it’s a good option for the other woman’s kids if they make other arrangements for the girls. The problem is if they make other arrangements for the girls that little boy is going to get mad because he’s not included anymore. Anytime they move…

— Lorrie Ann 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇸 (@LorrieAnn25) March 15, 2025

I watched the video of that angry mother, and what struck me is not her righteous anger–she was saying what any good mother would say, and in many ways, it was only remarkable because she had to say it. No, what infuriated me was the total indifference of the School Board to the distress she and her daughter felt and the silence with which they sat there as she recounted the incident. Rather than being shocked and apologetic, they sat there like stones, unmoved by what any decent person would find horrific. 

Adults bully children, making them feel helpless and violated because they felt righteous. These are totalitarians, so engrossed in their ideological certitude that they revel in bullying people and enjoy watching the distress of others. 

What lessons are they teaching? That people in power will stop at nothing to enforce their will and that their allies are allowed to do anything they wish. The young man is not at fault, but he, too, is being taught that he can claim any right by claiming victimhood. Everybody else can be forced to accommodate his desires if only he claims a certain authority-approved victimhood. 

None of these adults will face the consequences. Even if the mother’s lawsuit succeeds, the teachers, the school board, and the administrators will be protected by sovereign immunity. The students who were victimized once will be victimized again by whatever financial punishments the lawsuit might yield. The school or district will have to pay up, and services cut–all while the malefactors walk. 

Tar, feather, put them in stocks, then ostracize these totalitarians. Find some social punishment that fits their crime. Not for revenge, but pour encourager les autres.