Welcome to the season of taking
From his column, "Column as I see 'em"
Ah, the season of giving. It’s the time of year designed for us to show our loved ones how much they mean to us—in the form of gifts. We gather ‘round that overly-decorated evergreen tree, that candlestick on steroids or that Kwanzaa thing, and we give, give, give.
No one—I mean no one—cares about receiving. And if we do, it’s solely because we use the amount and cost of gifts we receive as a gauge of how much people love us. No big deal.
It’s especially good that the students here aren’t in the spirit of receiving, because for the administration, it’s more like the season of taking… which, for them, is more like the season of trying-to-take.
It all started when they cleared the halls with daily lockdowns (Fa la la la la, la la, la la). We’re continually stuck in our classrooms when all we have to do is innocently use the bathroom. The administration would rather us sit in pain. Have mercy, administration.
On that rare occasion when we do manage to get out of class, we find that the bathrooms are locked (with the exception of the P.E. bathrooms that many people don’t even know exist) after 2 p.m. Yeah, I understand that we need to cut down on vandalism in the bathrooms, but what difference does it make if they’re locked only after 2 p.m.? Oh, I get it: Vandalism must happen only after 2 p.m. It’s a law of nature or something, right?
And the administration doesn’t stop there. They are even withholding our club time from us. The one monthly 30-minute period of time that we have left to enjoy ourselves in school mysteriously disappeared this month. Because of them. Granted, it was because of them that it was there in the first place, but still. This is an outrage.
Furthermore, those Grinches tried to prevent us from selling our beloved “Get Some” shirts because of the phrase’s sexual implications—the sexual implications that only the faculty thought much of. This is the very same faculty that made “A Personal Touch” our school motto two years ago, people. A personal touch. We all learned what that means when we sat through those “Good Touch, Bad Touch” seminars in elementary school. With that motto, the administration lost its right to deem anything inappropriate.
But, on the bright side, they have given us something. On Dec. 18, they’ve given us the gift of two weeks away from them. With LC, though, there’s always a catch: This year, we have to wait until 2:45 p.m. to get that long-awaited gift. Oh, the humanity.
That’s not cool. I understand some of the things they do, like with the clubs. Many students just use that time to roam the halls, pretending to go to a club, when they really want to spend time with their boyfriend or girlfriend in the barely-lit hallway–that, sadly, is near my locker–or they just say that they are going one place when they just leave school or something. I understand that they want to lock the bathrooms to prevent vandalism, but setting a time limit is not going to stop it from happening; it just makes it more fun. The administration is just playing into their hands giving them a rush knowing that they are doing something that ticks them off to the point of punishing the whole school, and at this moment the teachers and faculty are the ones who are feeling the heat, not us.