The media would have a field day and say that he hacked his school database. It's crazy how so many institutions are doing the digital equivalent of leaving an unlocked car in a bad neighbourhood and no one holds them accountable. Most people understand the concept of an unlocked car, not many understand that he didn't do anything special to hack his school db. He just strolled right in.
The car analogy would be: He saw a car He tried the doors until he found one that was open He climbed in and searched everywhere until he found personal information about other users of the system Even though the security of this system was poor, he still (probably) broke the law. There are plenty of opportunities for people with some knowledge of IT to abuse their power, but it's our responsibility not to do so.
I think the important thing we miss with car/physical crime analogies is that cybercrime can be so invisible. Nothing is missing, nothing is taken... but users private data is lost. So if an organization is doing something terribly naive like publishing passwords to userdata in plaintext... it's disgusting for our society to punish the wrong people, the people pointing out the flaws rather than the ones who cause them. All the really malicious entities came and went and will never be caught.
They put private information into a JSON file accessible by an HTTPS GET, the only password being one that they put in plaintext onto everyone's phones.
My analogy: They put the private information onto a billboard, but you can only see the billboard from a particular vantage point in a public park.