Many people don't realize how the world around them is affected by bureaucracy, regulation, and tyranny, but one example can be related easily, especially at Dixon High School.
Our school recently built a new campus, and the transfer that began three years ago had been quite the tremendous event. Dixon High had a beautiful new campus, much like that of a small college, that was adorned with rams etched into almost every wall to note our loyalties.
At the old campus, which was still perfectly fine (don't ask me why we needed a new campus), the Associated Student Body (or Leadership Class as our school calls it) received regular fundraising income from soda machines that were strategically placed. The profit from these machines that vended sugary soda alongside sugary juices and the lesser-purchased good old-fashioned water was directly for the Leadership Class to appropriate.
These monies allowed the Leadership Class to appropriate money to host bread-and-butter events like class dances and pep rallies or subsidize club-hosted events such as benefit dinners and concerts. However, due to a law passed by the California State Legislature in 2007 (the year when the campus transfer began), sugary foods and drinks of any type were outlawed for sale on campuses state-wide, making it illegal for the Leadership Class to have the vending machines on the new campus.
For the Dixon High Leadership Class, this was a major blow. At a time when school spirit was at an all-time low, and students were just re-establishing the pecking order at the new campus, the Leadership was unable to hold any pep-rallies or dances minus a very, very minimal homecoming celebration. This was just the beginning of the troubles, however.
Every day, student body entities were having trouble fundraising due to new regulations that not only dictated what could be sold on campus, but what kind of events students could host. Candy bar fundraisers were rendered obsolete for clubs, and junk-car smashing events were later made illegal for shattering glass, although there had never been one injury at the events prior. Bon fires were obsolete and lunch crew contracts with the school violated Students' civil rights by making it against the rules for Students or Student Clubs to bring food onto campus for meetings.
The worst of these regulations, however would be an amendment made to the CalEd codes prohibiting volunteers from organizing to fulfill the duties of a position that had been vacated due to layoffs. When the economy crashed, our school had a budget crisis, as did many other schools. This ushered in many, many pink slips, and the first department to go was the library.
On a brand-new campus, our brand-new library and computer lab had to be shut down just one and a half school years after it had been finished. The PTA protested and the Leadership Class volunteered its time to help, but the Dixon Unified School District decided that it would not protest the clause in CalEd. So the library sat collecting dust, inaccessible by students for a year and a half, despite many being willing to organize to fulfill the duties formerly performed by the librarians.
To this day, the Leadership Class and club membership have not fully recovered. The Leadership Class was forced to cancel its Winter Ball this year and can only see even more cuts to events in the future as contracts will be redrawn for Administrators that will further overstep students rights and continue to strangle out any last shred of individualism and self-governance by students at Dixon High. Heck, at this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a contract that banned brown-bag lunches...There's nothing like tyranny for your own good, is there?
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that's what happens when the loony left constrols things
it would happen with the crazy right in control too.
Government is government, no matter who is running it.
Having gone to a high school with some where in the range of 5-10 vending machines, I know the kind of money that must have been lost by their removal. I, along with most of the school, could barely have made it through our 7:20 am first period without our caffienated drink of choice(at $1.25 a bottle)
This article is a really good illustration of the negative effects of good intentions. Policies like this are moving up the educational systems to colleges and universities.
So this is a California State Law - to ban the sale of sugary drinks during at the school? I can speak for my high school in the state of Washington; we had 5 - 10 sugary vending machines as well which remaind off until 2:00pm each day (when the day's classes end) due to some sort of similar restriction. The machines were subsequently flooded because people just needed a snack. We have got to go about this in a better way - BESIDES destorying a school's prominent source of income. Maybe they could somehow get another healthier company from which to buy there food.
Either way, this regulation should be lifted for these students/staff and this school. It just doesn't operate fairly for them...
The most egregius part of this is the loss of library and computer use> As a senior citizen, I have to just comment that income from vending machines was unheard of in my day- yet we danced and rallied to our hearts content. I don't even remember the candy bar sales that were ubiquitous in my children's generation. Never-the-less, this "We know better than you how you should live your life" government is death to fun and creativity and generally takes all the joy out of life. YAL gives me hope.
While the law is certainly stupid, I don't mind the fact that school spirit is dead. I could write a whole paper on why I think school spirit is bad so ill try to make this short. School spirit encourages blind loyalty to the higher ups at school - generally people who would kill a kid as soon as look at them. It also creates school rivalries - the most pointless aimless kind of hatred possible. School Spirit is just another outlet for the establishment to maufacture consent. Public Schools are bad in the first place - School Spirit just makes them worse.
I agree with you 100%. 'School spirit' is the antithesis of critical thought - it's brainwashing, pure and simple. It's the sort of thing that unscrupulous people encourage - Hitler, anyone? - because it allows them to manipulate the masses.
Even if the vending machines had "healthier" choices, you would still end up in the same situation. Because at my school in South Carolina all our vending machhines were outfited with "healthier" choices. So now all you can get is juice, diet soda, or water. It sucks because we are heading down the same road and our administration doesn't allow on campus dances except for Prom because they are overbearing and don't have the budget. The stupid thing about this is that we have a "grant" from a private funder (not) for personal laptops to use during the year but we don't have budget for hardly anything else. this is a kind of parallel to your vending machine issue. Not to mention teachers hardly ask us to use our laptops, we have to turn them in at the end of the year, and they don't work well.
Such a shame that schools don't recognize students when the administration's opinions get in the way. My old high school used to fight us when we tried to do fundraising for the debate team, though our fight certainly wasn't as bad as what the state is doing to you guys.
Have you guys heard about Students For Liberty? SFL works with students to support all kinds of pro-liberty efforts. High schoolers can apply for assistance with book clubs, get a fellowship to study with a college professor, and lots of other opportunities: http://studentsforliberty.org/for-high-schoolers/.
Keep fighting the good fight!