Nine people were hospitalized after a pepper-spraying incident in a Bronx high school. This is less than a week after a bunch of kids were sprayed in Harlem. What's with all the student pepper spraying?

According to the New York Times, nine people were hospitalized at Banana Kelly High School on Longwood Avenue and the school was evacuated for about an hour after the incident at 1pm. There was the Harlem incident where a 14-year-old girl sprayed a bunch of classmates last Wednesday, and a student pepper-spraying in the Bronx in the middle of last month.

The craze reaches beyond New York, too. A student discharged a container of pepper spray at a New Haven, Conn., high school last month. And in the most dramatic incident, someone pepper-sprayed a bunch of students at Vancouver's Kwantlen Polytechnic University during a student meeting to decide whether to throw out their allegedly corrupt Student Council.

So, the crucial question: Does the prevalence of pepper-spray in our high school hallways show that kids are becoming more humane, opting for less-than-lethal measures instead of dangerous superwedgies and swirlies? Or is pepper-spray actually encouraging students to escalate a situation where just a few embarrassingly Photoshopped pictures hung up on their locker might have sufficed otherwise?

Our heightened awareness to pepper spray may end up being one of Occupy Wall Street's greatest accomplishments.

[Image via Pepper Spraying Cop]