Before judging too harshly, remember that all of us did dumb stuff as teenagers

Pretty much all of us did some stupid stuff when we were in high school. Let’s face it, teenagers have a tendency to do that kind of thing.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

I know that I did a few bonehead things myself at that age.

Fortunately, I grew up in an era when everyone wasn’t carrying around a camera with them all of the time to record every stupid thing someone did for posterity and put it on social media for the world to see.

This is a different era though. Being a teenager isn’t the same today as it was back then. It’s harder.

On Friday afternoon reports began popping up about an image circulating on social media showing a white Corbin High School student holding up a rope that was around the neck of a Black Corbin High School student.

The photo is captioned “Your average day at Corbin.”

Corbin Independent Schools officials say they are aware of the inappropriate photograph involving the two Corbin High School students and are investigating.

Given the 1919 Corbin race riot that will forever haunt the town’s reputation, it is yet another stain for community leaders to deal with as they try to explain to people not from here that what happened 100 years ago isn’t the Corbin we live in today. Neither is the dumb thing that happened at the school the other day.

Should the students involved in this recent incident have done this? Heck no.

Was it wrong to do? Absolutely.

Should the students, who stood by watching this happen, also be held accountable for the incident too? Absolutely.

Let’s keep in mind that these are teenagers and when you’re young, you sometimes do dumb things.

It seems to me that a good punishment for those involved in this incident might be to research and write a report on the 1919 race riot and the lessons that should be learned from it. More important than serving as a punishment, maybe this would also serve as a good life lesson for these young people.

Now for a few other thoughts before I conclude this column.

• Occasionally, I have to write a column about something that makes me sad and this is one of those columns.

Jennifer K. Perkins is leaving us to pursue a career opportunity elsewhere in journalism. She is moving up in the world. I am happy for her, but sad that she is leaving us.

Jennifer first worked here as a summer intern in 2018, and did a fantastic job. When Trevor Sherman announced he was leaving us in 2020, our first phone call was to Jennifer.

We knew Jennifer would be a short timer when we hired her and that was alright with us. No matter what we have given her, she has done a great job on it.

She is smart, talented and full of sass. She gives me hope for this younger generation.

As I had expected to lose her in the fall to graduate school, I had been giving some thought for the last couple of months as to what I would say about Jennifer when she left.

I kept coming back to a paraphrased line from a Star Wars movie, which I think sums it up best. She still has much to learn, but there is little more that I can teach her.

I fully expect her to do great things in journalism or whatever field she ends up working in long term. She will be greatly missed here though.