Sentiment runs high
as the students gather
one by one
in the principal’s office
where rumors become truth.
They were caught
stealing and cheating
on their final exams.

Hue and cry
as concerned parents
line up and
hear the news.
Not my child, screamed a father
while his wife collapsed
on the floor.
A faint so spreading
that half of the
participants dropped too,
A symbolic stand on liberty;
the other students stood
like one-legged storks,
as the PTA
gathered in corners
with cardboard placards
“Let Our Children Go!”

Which by now
swelled to a hundred
or more people.
The cops arrive
with shields of truth
and fire hoses.
They sprayed the students down,
flooded their parents
as they flowed
west guided by the
under tow of public sentiment.

Only the ones
who passed their exams
without a tip sheet or written
on their arms
stood and looked beyond
the tide of sentiment
that buried their peers.