Fred Warner, the Vice-Principal, was in charge of things at East High today. He gave Wilson Kramer the official explanation that Mrs. Lewiston was taking a sick day.
What the Principal was really feeling sick about was the fact that Mac the skateboarder had gotten himself arrested (by Mr. Kramer, in his capacity as a county deputy) for assault at the city picnic. All of her efforts to fill that boy with enough self-love that he would have some love to spare for OTHER people, had failed. Now Mrs. Lewiston didn't know which approach would be more politically correct: to sympathize with Mac, because society MUST be to blame for any criminal's crimes--or with his target Chilena, because females MUST be in the right in any conflict with males.
It never crossed the Principal's mind to decide on her sympathies based on WHO HAD DONE WRONG; for her, everything had to fit in the parameters of identity politics and victim groups.