Diary Of An Inmate

I am in prison. No, I have not been incarcerated by law enforcement, but I go to prison every day. The prison I refer to is my high school. Now, I know many students feel that their school is a prison, but mine actually is. My high school is a place where the bad are punished, the good is not rewarded, and then the good get punished. We have a warden. We have too strict rules. We have a prison.

Technically my school became a prison at the beginning of last year when I beloved principal was replace by our current warden. Mr Rockstar (as he shall be refered to in this blog) was the best principal a school could ever ask for. He had rules and he was strict, but he also believed that an excellent school should have excellent rewards to celebrate student excellence. Happily for himm--sadly for us--he was promoted and we were soon introduced to his successor. This man, we shall call him Mr. Bad, at first seemed innocent enough.

Then the changes started rolling in like heavily armed men in a police state. Little liberties were taken away and students began to despise him. I will not go into detail here as to specifics (gotta save something for the book). Student morale went down, test scores dropped, and many students discussed transferring to our rival school.

I stayed because my parents moved to this district so that I could go to a top high school. Things got even worse and then the rules that had always annoyed me became personal.

A senior privilege is to take Yearbook. I was in the class first semester, but I had an AP class second semester and could not take it. I knew that one of the editors was in the same situation, so she was taking it as an independent study. I went to my counselor and had my schedule changed so that I could do the same. The next few days passed in relative happiness. I was liking my teachers and we were getting a lot done in yearbook. Then my counselor came in, pulled me out of the class, and informed that "the administration" did not want two people in the class. Needless to say, I was upset. I signed back up for the internship I was orignally supposed to be in. On Monday I still had not been placed with a teacher so I spent the class in yearbook. I have asthma and had forgotten my inhaler that day. My lungs had felt a little tight through my first three classes and then at lunch my attack struck like a perfectly poised cobra. My friend found a girl in the cafeteria who had an inhaler and I was able to use that to save my life. I was then sent to the nurse to await my parents.

While in the nurse's office, a Mrs. Desk-Monkey began to lecture me on my asthma, even though I told that I have been asthmatic since I was five. Mrs. Desk-Monkey's tone was very condescending to me and to my mother when she called. The next day I stayed at home to readjust to my medication. (At this point I had missed two periods of my fourth class.) I returned on Wednesday and the nurse was actually at the school. She condescended me, made me pantomime how to use my inhaler, and then criticized the way I was using it--I use it just like the real doctors told me to. She also made a snippy call to my mother later in the day. The day went pretty normally for me though after that. I was no longer in the internship and the assistant principal would not let me return to yearbook, so I was tossed into Art I.

Then Thursday arrived.

I, like almost every other teenager in America, own a cell phone. I carry it with me because that is how I get in touch with my mother at the end of the school day. Every morning I turn my phone off and slip it inside the inner pocket of my purse. At some point during the day, my phone turned itself on. I was in Mr. Formerly-Awesome's class when I heard the unmistakable sound of my phone receiving a text message. This class was an AP class and I had no intention of owning up to it being my phone, especially ater the previous events of the week. Mr. Formerly-Awesome refused to ignore the noise and called the administration. After the two assistant principals bullied me into pseudo-admitting it was my phone, I was escorted to detention.

I was not happy considering that I am in the top 10 of my class and am currently an applicant to Duke, Havard, Yale, Brown, and Princeton.

I informed my mother and she and my father flew into a rage. Mom went into the school where she was lied to by an assistant principal. She flew out of the parking lot and immediately took to the internet to research school and county policy. The school policy says that the third cell phone offense was one day in school suspension and that the first two were "principal discretion." That discretion is used to punish first time offenders with the penalty of a third time offender. Also, the county policy states that a student should only be removed from class if they are causing a SAFETY risk. So unless my phone was spraying anthrax, they had no right to remove me from my Art I class and my three AP classes.

My parents met with Mr. Bad the next morning. When they tried to speak with him rationally and calmly, he refused to listen to them and just kept repeating that it was "policy." A policy, I will remind you, that is not written anywhere. A mark of a good leader in the ability to listen to others. Mr. Bad does not posess this skill. My parents then began to raise Hell and threatened to pull me out of the school. Mr. Bad did not even attempt to prevent them from taking such action, because he simply does not care about the students. We left the building under the watchful eye of one overweight rent-a-cop.

My mom called the county school board and soon received a call from Mr. Rockstar. Now, admittingly, the 'policy' was Mr. Rockstar's, but if he had been there he would of listened to our complaint and perhaps we could have convinced him that there were more fitting punishments than detention. Mr. Rockstar calmed down my mom and we agreed that we could do more damage by keeping me in school than giving Mr. Bad what he wanted.

I returned after second period in a newly made shirt that had "Inmate 21411919" written across the chest and "______ Penitentiary" written across the back. Not a word was said to me by Mr. Bad and that was very wise of him. I was brought up not to start anything, but I WILL finish it. I sat in detention for two class periods.

Now, PHS's detention is a joke. Actually I assume the same is true of any detention. By taking kids out of class you are giving the kids who don't want to learn what they want and preventing the kids that care about their future to receive the education that they are entitled to have. Instead of learning AP Euro and taking my test in AP English (which I had now missed four out of five days in) I sat in a room and colored a fuzzy poster. Tax- payers money hard at work there. You would think a county as sickeningly conservative as mine would take offense at their money going down the drain.

I will be back in detention Monday for Art I and AP Statistics.

I will have another prison shirt. I will not back down. I will get that policy changed. I will get Mr. Bad removed. Mr. Bad will learn that he messed with the wrong girl.