Unlucky in the Force, Or, How Authority is Abused

When I was in high school, I was fond of wearing a long, black coat, and I only did this after checking the handbook and finding no rule against it. The only restriction on jackets and the like was that they were not to be worn between classes.

Eventually, the principal took me aside and asked me to stop wearing it, explaining that there was, in fact, a rule, but it was not in the handbook. This might have been a lie, but it doesn't really matter.

In high school, the time when we learn (or are told) how to think, we are taught that we are responsible for our actions by people who have a vested interest in keeping us from acting as if we were in the "real world," which leads to our skewed sense of how authority is supposed to work. The existence of the phrase "too big to fail" bears this out: a person with power can't fail, but he'll still foreclose on you. This, of course, is hypocrisy, but that's power for you.

What brought this to mind for me today was an article on io9.com about two students who were not only suspended, but barred from their graduation ceremony, for staging a lightsaber duel in their high school cafeteria.

I'm callin' you out!

The principal, despite all the people on Facebook who are supporting the students (because Facebook=moral rightness), is sticking to his guns. He says that since someone could have gotten hurt, they should be punished to such a severe degree.

At first glance, that makes sense. These two boys hadn't really considered that their lightsaber toys, approved for children eight and up, might so egregiously hurt a 17 year-old that that victim would have to sit out graduation. Well, fine. That works, since we are all punished equally for what might happen, but doesn't.

Oh. No. Wait, that would mean the principal isn't full of crap, but I can prove he is.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, since most drivers disobey speed limits, so, too, has this principal. That doesn't, at first, seem like a big deal. You speed. I speed.

A reason for us all to speed.

Going a little over the limit isn't a big deal, but thanks to moral luck, it's actually a pretty dicey issue.

You've probably never run over a child while speeding. I haven't (and gotten caught). But if we were speeding and ran over a child, that would be a contributing factor. So, by the principal's logic, we should go to jail for manslaughter whenever we speed, because it could happen.

If you read the wiki article on moral luck, you will see the philosophical contention that a person who doesn't run over a child is just as blameworthy as the person who does, but the kid-killer should feel worse. This is the plot of the indie mope-fest Bella.

There is no argument for depression beards

The principal isn't going to ask to go to jail because he's sped, but since he's a person with power, he gets to take other people's freedom away for trivialities.

The rub is that this is how everything is run in our society: the wealthy and powerful can manipulate, steal and kill, but as long as it's done through "contracts, foreclosure and war" it's ok. I think it's about time we point out that children are being taught this is how the world is supposed to work.

By the way, that coat of mine? I guess the reason the teachers were so nervous about it is because they were afraid I'd bring a gun to school. I think they would only have worried if they gave me a reason, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, there was another student who violated the rule in the book and wore a windbreaker all day, every day.

He brought a gun to school.

Maybe if high schoolers were treated like thoughtful adults, we'd have more thoughtful adults.

It Was Pretty Stellar, but then Stopped

One precept ruled my adolescence: if I wanted to succeed, I showed up. Pithy divisions of life's constituent parts aside, mere presence was 100% of what was required for me to be a winner. I'm sure some of the merits I won in those bleary years were earned, possibly more than the Superintendent's Award for Excellence in Spanish, but most have not taught me about who I am to be. Academics and extracurricular activities have been spotty in my college years, but that Spanish class put me in a larger world.

I qualified for the honor roll every semester of high school, doing so by turning in my assignments, mostly completed. I was, and remain, a sharp mind trapped in the brain of a lethargic student, a gaseous mass preferring to go nova than sustain light as a star.

This has carried over into my college years. The first essay I wrote for college English won an award (I think you can find the paper in these archives). For another English class I offered insight into Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums that actually impressed my teacher (who gleefully let us know a former student accused him of being "Hitler's long-lost Irish twin). I kicked ass when I cared.

On the other hand, I took mythology twice and only passed the second go because Neil Gaiman's Sandman books inculcated me with a deep love for the deep stories.

I didn't only get to middle through academics, though. As I'm rubbish at anything involving a ball, I didn't do high school sports, instead opting for speech and scholastic bowl. For the former my parents have a box full of medals, plaques and even a few lei won for talkin' just so perdy-like.

What these shining (in some handmade cases, glittering) examples of bric-a-brac don't tell you is that I won them by default; it's easy to place third in a three-person competition. Even so, I tend to tell people with a measure of pride that I went to sectionals all three years.

In college my extracurricular activities finally included a sport: fencing. And while I didn't do a lot of tournament winning, I did a lot of fine fencing. I had always wanted to learn how to sword fight, and it came naturally to me.

All this shows sharp compared to the one award I never expected to get, the Superintendent's Award for Spanish. It was an award handed out at these year-end functions designed to highlight the best and brightest of my submerged school, in which students were recognized for various subjects and sports.

By my senior year, I had been to three and never won an individual award. So when the opportunity arose to do some airsoft gunning in the woods, I jumped at it, since I was rarely invited to do things with my school chums (probably because I use words like "chum").

Late in the game, several players left for the awards, but I refused. I did not want to sit through another award ceremony for nothing (for me, anyway). I was going to enjoy time with my friends.

Little did I know that when I was hunting for them, my friends had decided to head home, each thinking I was with another. I ended up walking to within a mile of my house, only to be picked up by my superintendent/principle, who told me I had been mentioned that night.

I never thought of myself as a good Spanish student, but I was in Mr. Higbee's class for four years, which has excused me from taking foreign language courses in college. I was one of the three in my class to finish the program and I think that I was chosen partly because the teacher liked me. Unfortunately, I wasn't there that night.

I have always wanted to apologize to Señor Higbee for that, and to let him know that the culture and language to which he exposed me remains a warm place in my mind. It's too late to do so now, so for the rest of my life I will think to the first award I rightly earned and hear my inner voice, "lo siento."