Culture wars make for awfully strange bedfellows.

Look no further than one of the largest school districts in Missouri: the Rockwood School District in suburban St. Louis, which serves more than 20,000 students.

Residents angered by the district's COVID-19 protocols during the height of the pandemic -- as well as those upset by efforts at diversity and inclusion, and those nursing other right-wing grievances -- backed two candidates in the recent Rockwood school board race. It's a common move across the country, aimed at wielding greater influence in local schools.

Both candidates won.

One of them now goes by Jessica Clark.

Before her recent transformation into a champion of conservative causes, she was known online as Jessica Laurent. She promoted her "sugaring" lifestyle, in which a younger person seeks a relationship with an older, wealthier individual with the expectation of gifts and financial support.

Her brand was no big secret during the campaign; all her social media content remained online. But after winning a seat on the school board, one of her first moves was to scrub her "sugar baby" lifestyle videos from the internet.

When I called to ask what prompted this move, she said, "I'm done talking about the campaign." When I said this wasn't a question about the campaign, she hung up.

Of course, nothing is ever truly erased from the internet. Another person had recorded at least one of the original videos, and it's back on YouTube.

In this video, Jessica Laurent offers a virtual four-week "Sugar Boot Camp" for prospective sugar babies. She begins her pitch charismatically: "What the (expletive) is up, ladies. So, it's me, Jessica Laurent, St. Louis' one and only sugar lifestyle coach." She informs her viewers about an upcoming not-to-be-missed Sugar Ball: "(S)ugaring can be a little scary and a little intimidating. But you're talking to the lady who walked into the first Sugar Ball single and walked out with a CEO. And six months later, happily ever after, livin' the dream."

For all the recent conservative rhetoric about "grooming," Laurent Clark's supporters were fine with her recent past, judging from their comments on a post in which she explained this unorthodox business endeavor.

"The idea of 'sugaring' was a play on words and a brilliant way to attract the women who needed me the most," she explained on her Facebook campaign page. "They came thinking they were getting one thing, Sike! (sic)"

Sure, Jessica.

Her other social media posts included captions like "I'm yo husband's favorite so sit to (sic) basic ass down (lipstick kiss emoji)" from May 2, 2020, and a TikTok post with the hashtag "hoe is life." (Hoe is a slang term for a promiscuous person.) Senate hopeful Eric Schmitt follows her on Instagram, which also showcased her sexy lingerie photos.

Granted, Republicans may have had a different reaction if a candidate with progressive political views had the exact same road-to-empowerment personal story.

Imagine the pearl-clutching.

While her lifestyle choices and former business model may seem questionable for a school board member, some of her public statements about education are far more concerning.

In a video, she refers to the teachers union as "terrorists." Labeling members of a district's largest employee group, who are directly responsible for students' success, as terrorists shows remarkably poor judgment.

Parents of LGBTQ students were terrified by the posts and public comments she has made about them. On election day, Laurent Clark shared a meme of a "woke" Black teacher screaming at a kindergartner, "I said we gay today!"

Rockwood parent Matthew Wind said he is mostly concerned about her lack of qualifications, her brief tenure in the district and her motives for running.

As far as the sugar baby thing, he said it bothers him even if there's a lucrative market for it.

"I think it's a complete antithesis to why schools exist and what they want to do," he said. The point of an education is to acquire skills and learning that lead to an independent life. Snagging a sugar daddy or sugar mama offers the semblance of stability through complete dependence on another person, he explained.

Wind said he wants students to know: "Your worth is more than your body or your appearance or how you can make someone with money feel. Your worth can be so much more than that."

He thinks someone who recently built her brand around how to lure and profit from intimate relationships is a poor example for the district's kids.

Once upon a time, conservatives may have agreed with him.

Now, it's just a little sugar between friends.

Students applying to public universities in California are done with the ACT and SAT for good.

It's time for the rest of the country to follow suit.

Trustees at California State University decided this week to remove the standardized tests from its admissions process. CSU, the largest four-year university system in the nation, is following in the footsteps of the University of California system, which made the same decision in 2020 for its 10 campuses.

Studies have repeatedly found that high school grade-point averages are a better predictor of college success than SAT or ACT scores. Students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds who have access to pricey test prep and tutors tend to score higher on standardized tests, unsurprisingly.

Eliminating these high-stakes, high-stress tests will help level a playing field that already heavily favors the wealthiest families. The early indicators from California's experiment have found a positive impact on student diversity without lowering student achievement.

There's going to be plenty of additional data for universities to track from the past two years. During the pandemic, nearly 80% of four-year U.S. colleges and universities made submitting standardized test scores optional for applicants.

Paul Tough, author of "The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us," said this is one of the few positive educational trends to come out of the pandemic. He cites two main reasons: One, it removes a layer of stress for the kids applying to super-selective colleges; two, there is good evidence to suggest that the SAT and ACT are the most unfair qualifiers -- in an already-unfair process -- because of how income-dependent the results are.

"High school grades are less correlated with family income," he said. Colleges can consider an applicant's grades, along with the rigor of courses and the rest of the application elements, as a way to evaluate a student's potential without automatically eliminating those who test below a certain threshold. While aspects of college admissions will continue to favor those who have unearned advantages -- such as extra consideration for legacy candidates or preferential treatment for athletes in expensive, elite sports -- reforms are still possible.

"It is possible to design a system more fair to low-income kids," Tough said. Given that the mission of higher education is to increase social mobility, this should be a priority.

So far, MIT is the highest-profile institution to announce it will bring back standardized testing as part of its admissions process. In contrast, two-thirds of American universities and colleges, including every Ivy League institution, plan to remain test-optional for at least another year. Not all of them also forgo test scores for scholarships, but a significant number do.

Still, this patchwork approach defeats the larger purpose. Rather than keeping the tests optional, colleges should use the available data and drop them altogether. There are now 86 campuses that are test-blind, meaning they won't consider test scores even if students chose to submit them.

When we look at who benefits most from standardized tests, there are clear winners: the College Board, which administers the SATs, AP exams and PSATs; and ACT Inc., which runs the ACTs. The College Board, which is registered as a nonprofit, made $1.2 billion in revenue in 2020. In an essay for Forbes, journalist Susan Paterno noted the secrecy around the College Board's finances.

"Investments in hedge funds and partnerships with anonymous investors quintupled to $675 million over four years. About $162 million is in tax havens in the Caribbean and an unknown amount sits in secret accounts on the tropical island of Mauritius," Paterno wrote. The companies also benefit from multiple state contracts requiring high schoolers to take standardized exams in school -- at taxpayer expense.

The College Board and ACT Inc. insist their tests are useful predictors of students' readiness for college.

If the vast majority of colleges and universities have been able to select successful applicants for the past two years without the tests, how much value do these tests really add?

Don't let the billions in revenue at stake influence the answer.

Our 17-year-old son has no interest in the Oscars, but he rushed into the room where I was watching the awards show to confirm the reports that had taken over his social media feed.

"Did Will Smith really punch Chris Rock?" he asked.

It was more like a slap, I said -- an awful response to a bad joke.

I was still trying to process what millions of us had just witnessed on the live telecast. Rock was about to present the award for best documentary when he said to Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, that he couldn't wait to see her in "G.I. Jane 2."

He was referring to her shaved head. Pinkett Smith has publicly spoken about her struggle with alopecia, an autoimmune condition that causes hair loss. She rolled her eyes at the remark. At first, Will Smith laughed. But a moment later, he rushed the stage, slapped Rock and returned to his seat, yelling for Rock to "keep my wife's name out of your f

king mouth."

Like most confused viewers, I wasn't sure if this was a staged bit. Once it sunk in that Smith had responded to an ugly comment about his wife by hitting someone, I immediately thought of the consequences -- not for Smith, who received a standing ovation from his peers later in the evening while accepting the award for Best Actor. But the consequences for every young person watching.

Smith sent a message with that slap: not just to Rock, a grown adult and professional comedian, but to every young person who will see it. He told them that it's an act of "love" to respond to an insult with your hands.

It most certainly is not. It's an act of violence.

We teach toddlers to "use their words" when they feel big emotions like anger, frustration and hurt. Parents of Black and brown boys in this country know that lesson is even more urgent for our sons.

Those who lack the protections of superstar fame and wealth don't get standing ovations after they hit someone. They get suspended from school. Or they get sent to jail. Or in places like Missouri, where anyone could be carrying a gun at any time, they get shot.

While the Oscars program continued seamlessly after this fracas, I thought about a scuffle that happened last summer at a St. Louis-area mall: 21-year-old Jason Hill fatally shot 20-year-old Malachi Maclin on July 3. A grand jury found that Hill had acted in self-defense after Maclin made a threatening comment and punched him in the face.

The young men did not know one another. It might have been a case of mistaken identity.

I've thought about those young men a lot since that incident. A young man's life lost -- for what?

Those who are part of my generation likely remember the fights that would break out over insults, perceived and real, when we were growing up. More often than not, a few punches were thrown and it was over.

That's not the world our children live in. They shop and work and study in places where slapping someone carries the risk of getting shot.

Clearly, that's not Will Smith's reality.

Was he justified in getting angry about Rock's barb at his wife? Of course he was. He could have called him out a dozen different ways. He could have used his acceptance speech to clearly say why his reaction was wrong instead of rationalizing it and framing it in the language of love.

Young girls who internalize the belief that protection and love look like violence can have that very idea used against them by abusers. Young men who see a star they admire applauded for hitting a man over an insult internalize that approval.

As adults, we know that we cannot walk up to and slap a colleague who insults us. But in the heat of the moment, young people act impulsively -- and outside the rarefied world of Hollywood, there are life-altering consequences for that kind of behavior.

If Smith wants to be a vessel of love for his community, he needs to talk honestly with Black and brown children about the risks of that kind of escalation.

That's what love looks like.