Weekly News Archive

May 4 (’03) – May 10 (’03)

I am a High School Student

Not long ago I received an email from a largely anonymous source. It was brief, passionate, and to the point.

The author accused — or perhaps merely explained — that this site, and myself, avoid the real issues at Berkeley High. The important ones. Ours.

The BHS of the students is not the one I often address.

The BHS of the students is the largest, and yet, often the most unnoticed sector of its representation.

The BHS of the students is the reason the school exists, yet is so often relegated to a lip-serviced higher motivation rather than a day to day goal.

This, then, is our Berkeley High.

Berkeley High is a place of grimy apathy. We move like ants through a maze that grows progressively both smaller and harder to navigate. There are six functional pencil sharpeners per thousand students.

Here we analyze staff like sociologists, vying to discover our gradegivers’ quirks and desires. One teacher deducts credit for placing your staple in the wrong place. Another allows entire semesters to pass before handing back homework. The only universally liked man in the school is a small gray substitute named Mr. Kulunk.

Here, it dark, not because we are damned, but because the flourescent lights slowly flicker and fail, while our budget quietly eliminates the roles of custodians. Craps games are a daily enterprise in the bathrooms. Doing anything else there may scar you for life.

When I am dismissed early from my 6th period, I do not slip through the bushes to escape the watchful eye of the security net. I walk out the front entrance. Maybe the multiple guards stationed there can smell the fact that I am leaving for a legitimate purpose. Or maybe they’re too busy stopping the black student next to me.

Here the faculty are at once the most vital and the most ridiculous factor. They bear the full weight of keeping us from Marxian revolt eight hours a day, five days a week. Often they do it admirably. Often, after long enough, it breaks them, and those selfsame students are left with a broken, bitter, and disillusioned shell of a teacher, counselor, or administrator. Just in time for tenure.

Here we are both the motive and the impediment. School exists to serve us. We view it as a pain and work against it. The educational workers view us as cute mice who aren’t sure what’s best for us. The one-year-is-good-enough-for-my-resume teachers, substitutes, and security guards live on the edge of the wave, feeding off the interplay without any interest in it, which is why our turnover rate is incredible, our substitutes never get beyond role call, and if you make it through the year without getting anything stolen you’re up for a record, but if you report it to security and get a response, you’re even luckier.

This is us. We’re people. Live with it.

On that note, yes, we’ve finally posted an update, after plenty of downtime due to business and a small amount of slacking. We’ll try to get back in the swing of regular news. Watch this space.

— Brandon