Thanks, wanderingchana! 🙂
PBA: I appreciate the compliment :). Anyway, I have a couple of reasons why I, personally, thought about it this way.
1) My mom is a first-generation American, and received a very European upbringing which she’s given my family as well. Part of that is an intense focus on manners- not to the extent of “no elbows on the table,” but definitely including holding the door for someone until someone else takes it (which in this day and age, annoyingly enough, can mean twenty minutes later when everyone’s out), saying please and thank you and excuse me in the appropriate situations (not exactly a no-brainer now either), and, one of the main focuses, apologizing if something that you do annoys somebody. If you bump into someone, you apologize. If someone pushed you into someone else, you apologize, because the point isn’t only “I was wrong”: it’s also “I’m sorry you were injured/embarrassed/inconvenienced.” It really doesn’t matter who did it- it’s about commiserating with the person who is suffering and frustrated. It’s validating the other person’s annoyance. Call it kissing up, I don’t care, but it’s just a nice thing to do. People were delayed in their flight, people had to put up with kids who were probably at least a little bit rowdy (I was on a flight to Israel with a Taglit-Birthright group- wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy)- why not at least acknowledge that you were the vehicle for this (even if it’s not your fault directly) and try to be nice and sympathetic?
Happens to be, in this particular case, so far as I’m concerned, they can apologize nicely like civilized people, acknowledging that they had a hard time and apologizing for its occurrence, and at the same time sue the pants off of Southwest if they decide they have a case. They’re not mutually exclusive.
2) There is, regardless of what we may want to think, a MAJOR chillul Hashem whenever something like this happens. It doesn’t matter whether it was our fault or not- I was just on a different site (non-Jewish) where a bunch of parents were talking about it and were absolutely disgusted that (religious) kids did this and that they “had the nerve” to pull “the Jewish card.” In life, IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU DO- IT’S REALLY WHAT PEOPLE THINK YOU DO. For instance, if a frum Jew were to commit a white-collar crime and be convicted, the next Jew who is accused of such a thing will be completely blasted- “just like that other Jewish guy.” Doesn’t matter whether he’s guilty or innocent- that’s just the way people think. It creates negative stereotypes, and even if there is absolutely no blame that can be ascribed, there can still be a chillul Hashem.
Notice that I’m not saying that the chillul Hashem is (entirely) on the part of the school- I rather think that the chillul Hashem is perpetrated by the person who created the common stereotype. A chillul Hashem doesn’t just mean that a Jew did something wrong- it means that Judaism and Hashem are perceived negatively, and in this case, regardless of whose fault it may have been, that definitely occurred.