My old high school hasn't been doing so well since I left. A coincidence, of course. Our graduating class thought we'd left our alma mater in decent shape. We championed a referendum that stopped the district from cutting sports and reducing afterschool activities to Scrabble Club and yearbook. We left educational and extracurricular opportunities intact to be seized by future generations. Like our little brothers and sisters; I have one of each.
Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power."
Aldous Huxley probably would have agreed that with a little cutting and pasting, togas are easily converted into the kind of cheap cotton T-shirts high school administrators distribute to na've schoolchildren.
So post-referendum, homeowners in my district were milked for more than their worth. Salaries stayed afloat and speech team survived. And last I heard before summer's end, the school district was making excellent use of its resources, hiring handwriting experts to protect the reputations of high-ranking officials. Or more specifically, to analyze one anonymous letter defaming the science department chair-despite the fact that hundreds of anonymous letters are received and disregarded (as a matter of principle) by the district every year. The letter in question was typed. This posed no real ethical or technical problem. A couple of words on the envelope were handwritten. A teacher with a motive and a spotty history with the administration was hauled in and permanently hauled out.
Now there's a real coincidence.
Scandals don't end. They are merely replaced, as we at Duke well know. I flew home for winter break and was greeted by the latest calamity. My brother, a page editor, came home with a grim look on his face and a copy of the school paper in hand. I stared at the seemingly innocuous poll:
What is the worst thing about the holidays?
"Getting jewed out of presents," responded one long-haired, sleepy-eyed freshman. Indeed, the anti-Semitic/more accurately idiotic comment was pasted next to a picture. A handy mugshot to service the public mayhem to follow.
At least one reporter, one page editor, two editor-in-chiefs and two faculty advisors had fallen asleep at the wheel. They somehow "missed" the chance to excise the quote, set in bold, smack in the middle of the 100-percent recyclable rag, of which 3,000 copies were probably confiscated and burned in effigy.
As a former high-ranking official of this particular newspaper, I figured had it happened two years ago, I would accept responsibility. It is, or should be, a student newspaper after all. That wasn't happening, however, and all hell was breaking loose. I scratched my head, I shook my head and goodness forbid-I laughed. Not at the kid or at the unfunny attempt at a joke that would follow him well into his movie-making career. But at the Chicago Tribune, the Jewish Defense League and the smooth machinations of the superintendent.
Action was necessary, but its sanctimonious tone was unfortunate. Formal apologies were demanded, ceremonial apologies were issued, veins throbbed, dissertations were written and conciliatory letters were printed off by the thousands to oblivious parents everywhere. The Chicago Chapter of the JDL equated referring to the incident as a learning experience with calling "an alcohol-related traffic death of a teen driver a 'learning experience.'" And the Daily Herald, that great bastion of good taste, set the news right underneath a perfectly lovely, perfectly enormous picture of some adorable child lighting a menorah.
Best of all, the school's fledgling principal, current chum of the superintendent, allegedly responsible for attempting to censor the newspaper's coverage on an unfairly fired/grudgingly reinstated teacher, declared a state of emergency-or the equivalent, anyway-naming himself overseer of future publications.
I came back to Duke, having learned very little, apart from the reality that scandal in general has ceased to depend on even the pretense of suspense. There are no morals to present in the end, just a stunning lack thereof. I guess the the JDL was right. This was no learning experience. Only twisted little truths come to mind.
Sometimes life works out remarkably well for the puppeteers standing a safe distance away. A comedy of errors is more often a comedy of calculations. And kids may say the darndest things, but they aren't always guilty of doing the dumbest.
Jane Chong is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
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