We don't know Soddy-Daisy High School athletic director Jared Hensley, so we can't characterize his motivation for making the comments he did in a recent video on a school dress code that went viral and resulted in Hamilton County Schools placing him on administrative leave Wednesday.
He may have been joking in trying to make a point about the school's dress code, or he may have been deadly serious when he said to "blame the girls. Because they pretty much ruin everything."
Frankly, if Hensley thought that way, we can't imagine why he would have wanted to be a teacher in classes that generally have as many girls as boys.
But even if he had been joking, his words - as too often happen today - condemned an entire group when he was likely referring a select few who don't follow the rules. And there are infinitely better ways to get his point across than what he said.
We don't know what will become of Hensley following his administrative leave, but it would be a tragedy if a teacher/coach who should have used better words to clarify dress code violations, but who by all rights is a supportive and proper educator, is punished in a way that inhibits his way to make a living or denies a school from an effective professional.
But our concern is beyond Hensley and beyond Soddy-Daisy High School. We are concerned that too frequently today nothing becomes something, something becomes an allegation and an allegation becomes a fact. In other words, in too many cases, nothing becomes fact.
» In the situation with Hensley, an educator who inelegantly explains proper dress code is branded as a sexist and a misogynist.
» In a Supreme Court hearing, a nominee can be accused of sexual assault by someone who can't remember where she was, who was present and who played specific roles in the alleged incident.
» In elementary school classrooms across the country, little boys who bring toy guns to class are suspended and branded as future mass shooters.
» The vice president of the United States chooses not to have private meals with women other than his wife out of an abundance of caution.
» A 4-year-old boy who hugged his teacher's aide is given in-school suspension.
We recall a minister more than two decades ago describing how he used to have individual members of the church's confirmation class accompany him as he made rounds of visits to hospitals and shut-ins but no longer did so because he had no witness as to what occurred in the car between stops.
He therefore missed out on having relaxed but serious one-on-one chats about faith with young men and women who were preparing to become full church members, and they missed out on asking intimate questions about their faith and the ministry outside the sometimes stifling presence of parents and friends.
In every situation, we get it. A teacher should think about the words he chooses. A woman who claims a sexual assault should be heard. A little boy who brings a toy gun to school must be taught school is not an appropriate place for any gun. Vice presidents must be careful with whom they meet. Children should understand there are times and places for displays of affection. And ministers, perhaps more than most, must be careful about how their actions are seen.
Too often, though, it feels like we have returned to 1692, when the Salem witch trials propmpted a sense of mass hysteria in several Massachusetts towns. At that time, to paraphrase words by Gretchen Adams in her book "The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trial in Nineteenth-Century American," events played out that revealed the dangers of isolation, religious extremism, false accusations and lapses in due process.
We fear we're moving toward a time when people will need to be virtual automatons to properly deal with other people, lest an errant word, a joke, a reference or a story become colored as things they are not. If smartphones already haven't done enough to curb one-on-one conversations, this fear of saying the wrong thing and having it mischaracterized will.
We don't purport to know how we back down from this miasma of accusation that has befallen this country, but we believe it may have something to do with keeping things in proper context in dealing with individual situations. When that is the case, it is much harder for nothing to become fact. Let us strive in our own lives to offer that context and to insist on it in the situations with which we're confronted.