Stupid mistakes. Sure we all make them. I remember this one time in high school I flipped off my gym teacher. That was a stupid mistake, especially for a guy unaccustomed to running for 50 minutes straight. Once I went to the bar and got drunk having forgotten I had given blood that day. That was pretty stupid. Once I told a friend of mine I was cool with him going out with an ex-girlfriend. That was a huge mistake of the stupid variety. But I can honestly say I’ve never committed a felony and tried to dismiss it as a stupid mistake, and I’m pretty sure public support would not have come my dark and working class way either.At least three times in the last week, letter writers have referred to Nick Johnson’s vandalism as a stupid mistake. I disagree with this vehemently. Let’s be clear about what actually constitutes a stupid mistake. Accidentally having sex with your wife’s twin sister is a stupid mistake. Buying weed from an undercover cop is a stupid mistake. Making bomb jokes in an airport might even be called a stupid mistake.What Nick Johnson did was commit a costly act of felony vandalism. The stupid mistake here is anyone acting like the slap on the wrist the judge gave him was too much for him to bear. It’s also a stupid mistake to think that anyone who takes a seriously dim view towards his act is heartless. Campus sympathy for Nick Johnson is an insult to hard-working criminals everywhere who don’t get our sympathy when they commit armed robbery or sell crack.The real issue here is one of entitlement. You can see it every day on the faces of your fellow students. College is the high school after high school for many people. We come here thinking that recess has been extended from the half hour after lunch to all but two or three hours a day. We expect to be treated like children because most of the time we act like children.Most people won’t say it explicitly, but they think punishment is for the under-privileged. As far as the value of art, I do not concur with the slack-jawed masses who denounce our campus art as about as valuable as pink flamingoes and tractor tire flower beds. The fact that most of us ignore art doesn’t make it any less valuable.The “Ring of Life” statue isn’t some garden gnome. This isn’t the kind of statue you buy at Earl May’s so the paper boy has somewhere to put your Register when it’s raining. This is real art. This is the kind of art a man works and sweats over. Anyone who has ever created real art can appreciate the work it takes to produce.I take it as a given that the vast majority of us don’t appreciate art. Hell, I don’t spend time each day mulling over the meaning of each piece on campus, but I’m not a complete Philistine either. Maybe the problem here is that most of us think we know what art is because our kindergarten teacher made us glue macaroni to particle board and garnish it with glitter. Maybe for some people art is just some masturbatory act of self expression that is as easy to toss off as a clay ashtray at summer camp, but it isn’t.Nick Johnson’s sentence will probably be enough to make sure he never screws up again, but since when do we concern ourselves in this country for what is best for the criminal? I am all for rehabilitating the under-privileged because they deserve a second chance at life. For the privileged, I recommend only the harshest of punishment. Why? Because we cannot give them the chance they never had because they DID have it.Is there no end to the hypocrisy? So many of us feel sorry for Johnson because we identify with him. We don’t identify with him because we have committed similar crimes or crimes with similar price tags. We identify with him because we see his mugshot in the paper and think to ourselves that anyone that clean cut who looks just like us can’t be all bad. Johnson got off light because he is a squeaky clean, white, college kid and if his complexion were duskier and his last name a bit more exotic, public support would have dried up faster than a bottle of tequila at a cockfight. Johnson was not smart because he pleaded guilty to this crime. If he were smart, he wouldn’t have been caught. He just wasn’t stupid enough to try and deny committing a crime he bragged about. Had he done so, Steve Holmes, prosecuting attorney, would have paraded a string of witnesses into court to rat Johnson out. There is nothing honest and decent about a criminal doing the only thing his lawyer is legally obligated to let him do. Watch “Law and Order” people, it’s all there.As for the restitution Johnson is expected to pay, this $36,000 tab is an indicator of how serious this crime is. There are no punitive damages attached to that amount, that is what it will cost to fix this statue. We should not think of this as a fine because it most certainly is not. If you cause damages, you pay for them and that is the very least you can do. We should have sympathy for Johnson having to pay court costs and probation fees? Why? When was the last time we had an onslaught of letters encouraging all to feel pity for a local meth dealer’s court costs? The problem with crime and punishment in our society is one of distribution and perception. As a nation, we demonize criminals from the ranks of the poor and minorities while taking an unusually casual attitude toward criminals who are rich, middle class, educated or white. We give cushy country club sentences to those convicted of insider trading while locking up drug users in dank hellholes with murderers and rapists. When all is said and done, Nick Johnson should have known better. Those of us who find his actions deplorable are not hypocrites; we are entitled.

Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily and has outstanding warrants in 14 states.