Joshua Vannoy, 17, didn't go to school yesterday.

He was advised not to, but by whom he declined to say. He did allow that he'd received a number of threats.

His teacher John Kelly, on the other hand, went to work as usual.

The student and the teacher are center stage in the now-infamous football jersey incident. The teen says he was not allowed to take his seat in Mr. Kelly's class Friday at Big Beaver Falls Area Senior High School, but forced to take his midterm exam on the floor, encircled by his classmates in their desks, all because he wore a Denver Broncos jersey to class two days before the AFC Championship game.

He says that Mr. Kelly, who teaches the honors elective in ethnic relations and is a rabid Steelers fan, belittled him for his attire and further instructed his classmates to throw crumpled pieces of paper at him during the test (only one classmate refused), and that he was too humiliated by the experience to complete his exam.

Asked about the incident by Post-Gazette reporter Tim Grant, high school Principal Thomas Karczewski said the teacher's action was "intended as a joke" and that the matter was "getting out of hand."

Mr. Kelly, for his part, had only this to say: "We won the game [Sunday] night, didn't we? That's all I was worried about."

Perhaps Mr. Kelly should be worried about a few other things, like how badly he comes out looking in this incident -- that smug little quip didn't help -- and what the district might do about it.

"We're not making light of this at all," said Superintendent Donna Nugent. What she meant by that remains to be seen.

Comments on the Big Beaver Falls Area online alumni forum were mixed yesterday. Some defended Mr. Kelly as a good teacher unfairly vilified; others called for him to be fired. Some attributed weird motives to Mr. Vannoy's family, and still others said the teenager was right to complain. A few cautioned everyone to calm down.

Meanwhile, my colleague Mr. Grant received more than 100 e-mails; 75 percent of the writers were indignant on the student's behalf and furious that a teacher would think such a stunt was funny. The incident has appeared on the national wires and even made the "Today" show.

Mr. Vannoy, a junior who claims to have a high grade-point average and no history of trouble in Mr. Kelly's class, says he's worked hard in high school to qualify for a college scholarship, and that the teacher's ire came at him out of nowhere.

Nobody so far has disputed his story. Some critics have called him overly sensitive, but no one says he made it up. So as far as I can see, there's only one thing that really matters here.

It's not how popular the teacher is, whether he was joking or trying to make a point about discrimination (that suggestion was actually posted on the message board). It's not whether the student's skin is thick enough, or whether he "got" the teacher's intent. And it's certainly not home-team loyalty -- this is hardly the kind of publicity that would make the Rooneys proud.

It's the imbalance of power, pure and simple. A teacher who forgets about that disparity, or, worse, exploits it for entertainment value, is asking for trouble.

Remember being a high school junior worried about college applications and whether you'll make the cut? Remember losing sleep before exams because your entire future seemed to be riding on your grades?

What could possibly be funny about showing up to take a big test, only to be targeted for derision by the person with all the power, and over something as idiotic as a jersey? How could any educator think it would be OK to rattle a student in such a way?

And what kind of lesson was he teaching by turning others against their classmate at such a critical moment, when it was obvious they were laughing at him, not with him?

If Mr. Kelly really is a good teacher who made a dumb mistake in the heat of Steelers fever and not a bully who gets his kicks at others' expense, he can prove it by following this simple, five-point plan:

1. Apologize to Mr. Vannoy for exercising such bad judgment, and do it in front of his classmates. That would take some of the heat off the young man and lower the temperature all around.

2. Apologize to the other students for urging them to pile on.

3. Give bonus points to the one student who had the guts to refuse -- she seems to have absorbed a key lesson in ethnic relations class about "just following orders."

4. Let Mr. Vannoy take his test again and have another teacher grade it.

5. Finally, to prove that Mr. Kelly cannot only dish it out to students but also take it like a man, he should wear a Seattle Seahawks jersey to school every day from now through the Super Bowl.

And laugh about it.