"Zero tolerance" at work: graduating students face prosecution for sneaking into school and releasing thousands of ladybugs.

The school's principal must be truly dedicated to cruel rigidly to think that this called for prosecution, or any punishment.

Ladybugs do not hurt or bother humans; on the contrary, they eat other insects. They are pretty, and most people are delighted to see them. Seeing a school corridor with lots of ladybugs must be almost like visiting the monarch butterfly sanctuary.

It is not clear to me why they thought they had to vacuum up the ladybugs, rather than let them fly out the windows and eat other insects in the neighborhood. Perhaps that too was an example of mental rigidity: "The school has to be clean for graduation!"

American schools have become institutions to inculcate subservience to cruel and rigid authority. This example shows how "zero tolerance" feeds into the school-to-prison pipeline.