The expression “hoist by his own petard” comes from the Bard himself, in Hamlet:

There’s letters sealed; and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.

— Prince Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 4

Wikipedia notes:

The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown (“hoist”, the past tense of “hoise”) off the ground by his own bomb (“petard”), and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice.

A shorter version might just be one word: karma. And so we have a major dose of karma on the campus of Temple University.

A Temple student pleads to sexual abuse, burglary. Questions arise on whether Temple should let him stay

The incident occurred in October 2022 at American University and led to student protests.

by Susan Snyder | Monday, August 5, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

The 2022 case made headlines and led to student protests at American University: A male student entered two female students’ dorm rooms without permission on Oct. 31, took underwear, and touched one woman on the inner thigh while she was sleeping.

The man, David Kramer-Fried, fled the room when the woman awakened, according to court documents. Police later found a pair of women’s underwear in the front pocket of a hoodie that Kramer-Fried was seen wearing that night on security video, the documents said. The university eventually barred him from campus.

He was arrested last December and on June 14 of this year, Kramer-Fried pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary and misdemeanor sexual abuse — charges that don’t require him to register as a sex offender.

Upon reading this story, I tried several searches, but was unable to find a photo or mugshot of Mr Kramer-Fried with which to illustrate this article, and I do so love including mugshots. Even the American University notification that he had been barred from their campus didn’t include his photo, which seems odd: how can Mr Kramer-Fried be barred if other students and staffers do not know what he looks like? There’s nothing I could find which would even tell readers whether he is black or white. From his name, I suspect that he’s white, but have no way of knowing. All that left me was a stock image of crime scene tape to use to illustrate this article.

About the time of his plea, his public defender noted he was enrolled full time as a student at Temple University, while also having to regularly report electronically to the court’s pretrial services. Kramer-Fried, now 21, awaits sentencing scheduled for Aug. 23.

It’s unclear at what point after his arrest Kramer-Fried was accepted to Temple, but the situation around his case raises the question of whether, when and what kind of criminal records or activity of potential students should be considered in the college application process — a subject of intense scrutiny in recent years.

The sentencing scheduled for August 23^rd might answer the question as to whether he should be allowed on Temple’s campus, as he could get several years on the burglary charge. Me? I have to wonder how anyone as boneheadedly stupid — if you break into someone’s dorm room, you are automatically stupid — as Mr Kramer-Fried could have been admitted to any college; American University is a private school which has an acceptance rate of 40.6%. Temple’s acceptance rate is much higher, in the lower 80% range, but who’d really want to go to college someplace where random bullets may fly?

The article continues to tell us that the group Student Activists Against Sexual Assault believe that Mr Kramer-Fried should not be allowed on campus, a position with which I agree. Several paragraphs follow to tell readers of the opposition to allowing him to be a student at the University.

But then we get to the “hoist by his own petard” part:

In 2019, Common App removed the criminal history questions from the “common” portion of its application “to provide members with the greatest flexibility to determine how best to comply with their local requirements and institutional policies.”

A year later, it stopped asking applicants to include school disciplinary violations after finding that Black applicants reported incidents at more than twice the rate of white students.

“Requiring students to disclose disciplinary actions has a clear and profound adverse impact,” Jenny Rickard, the group’s president and CEO, said at the time. “This is about taking a stand against practices that suppress college-going aspiration and overshadow potential.”

There’s a lot more at the original, telling us how the left pushed to not have questions about past criminal arrests and convictions become a bar to admissions, though some wanted to make an exception for sex offenses. Mr Kramer-Fried didn’t plead guilty until a couple of months ago, and his acceptance at Temple may have predated his conviction; we’re not told about that, either.

But I am amused how the attempts by the left to not penalize applicants who are black for previous criminal history — no one seems to ask why black applicants might have a higher rate of criminal accusations and convictions — might have allowed a possibly white applicant with charged sex offenses to be accepted, and now people are up in arms about it. Mr Kramer-Fried was only arrested last December, despite having been identified much earlier.

There’s a lot of fault here. Temple didn’t do enough due diligence to reveal that he’d been barred from another university, and apparently knew nothing of his at-the-time alleged offenses. Some of that stems from not wanting to spend much money on due diligence, but it also stems from the leftist mindset that such things shouldn’t be investigated because it might disproportionately affect minority applicants.

Mr Kramer-Fried might be stupid, but so are the liberals who handle cases like this.

High school teachers are supposed to be reasonably well educated, with a bachelor’s degree at the very least, and most public school districts require teachers to earn a master’s degree within a few years of being hired. So how can so many of them be so very, very dumb?

Katy ISD teacher arrested, charged with 10 counts of child pornography, admits to producing images himself

Monday, May 13, 2024 | 4:03 PM CDT

HOUSTON – A Katy ISD teacher was charged with Possession of Child Pornography.

James Paul Stone was arrested on Monday, May 13th after Constable Ryan Gable’s Criminal Investigations Division, in conjunction with the Texas Department of Public Safety executed a search warrant at his home. Continue reading →