WTF? How do you have a high school without backpacks?
But yeah, spit in the eye of the security guard and tell him to mind his own business. Good god.
I suppose there is an Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret angle to it as well. Imagine you are a 13-year-old girl who hasn't reached menarche yet, and the other girls get to whispering that they've *never* seen you with a purse at school. Also mortifying, I'll bet.
A rolling bleed-in action would put an end to this rule in less than a month. The late bleeders should commit to doing their part even if the battle is won early, though, because of the free rider / moral hazard issues.
When i was in High School we had the opposite problem: you weren't allowed to go your locker except before school and at lunch, so everybody had to lug 20 pounds of books around with them all day.
And backpacks weren't cool back then, so we were all shlumping dufflebags around. I think I still walk lopsidedly.
High school is stupid.
But, you know, girl are pussies. They won't do it.
And yet no one ever acknowledges the gruesome resemblance of Hillary Clinton to every vice principal I ever met.
When I was in high school, everyone carried around bombs in their backpacks. At first, of course, it made people nervous, but then they realized that equipping everyone with bombs almost completely deterred conventional fistfights.
There were some issues, however, with kids having proxy fights through people at other schools where people weren't allowed to have bombs.
How much of these pointless high school rules are just about training the citizenry to be docile?
Couple thoughts:
1) God, how embarrassing. I can remember being that age and being sure that everyone could tell that you were on your period because you were going to the bathroom more often and you were carrying your purse. I can't imagine having those goofball suspicions confirmed. This goes double for teachers who made a big deal out of letting people go to the bathroom. No more than twice a month in my class... teacher, kiss my ass.
2) My high school and middle school wouldn't let us go to our lockers between classes, just in the morning, before and after lunch, and at the end of the day. This was to prevent us from going to our locker and chatting or using drugs.
Ten years later the high school has developed an actual heroin problem, the parents are shocked and crying when the new principal brings in drug-sniffing dogs (we're not in the city!), and the school's regulations are all about tank tops.
3) Ten bucks says this high school has never had a violence problem, and the 'problem kids' are those that occasional smoke cigarettes behind the gym, but the principal heard about the Columbine massacre and thought, if only Klebold and Harris didn't have backpacks....
2 sounds wrong to me: it sounds like the kids here are surprisingly open and comfortable about menstruation (good for the next generation, say I).
11: It's only a matter of time before someone links that Kids In The Hall sketch...
And then what happens if Susie Jenkins, who's dating the captain of the football team, hasn't been seen with a purse for at least five weeks. Why hasn't she needed her purse? Doesn't she usually carry a purse every 27 days? I heard Bobby is really getting worried about the absence of the purse.
11: Either open and comfortable or having a lot of fun being subversive.
Both, I think. And if they weren't open and comfortable before, they will be after wearing menstrual pads and tampons as accessories.
You people are being totally insensitive to the position these girls are putting that poor security guard in. If they refuse to answer his perfectly straightforward questions, either he'll have to check manually, or through lax security invite another Columbine. Either way, their blood will be on his hands.
It's only a matter of time before the boys start inducing rectal bleeding as a protest.
So wait Brock was protesting? Boy are we insensitive!
In junior high, we were only aloud to go to our lockers before/after school, and during lunch.
In high school, they banned backpacks one year.
Both times, it was 'drugs.'
Here is the ninth circuit upholding a strip search of a 13 year old for Ibuprofen. Who will protect our children from over-the-counter medication?
yeah, we had to keep aspirin inside emptied bic pens at school.
Location/environment seems to matter too. My kids' high school is downtown in Chicago, and while there are metal detectors, people are sent through them randomly, not everybody. And all of these rules discussed here are not part of the place, and seem to be from an alien planet, like the suburbs.
Shitty as highschool was in many ways, at least I never had to deal with that kind of stupid, thank god.
16 made me spit out my coffee.
And then what happens if Susie Jenkins, who's dating the captain of the football team, hasn't been seen with a purse for at least five weeks?
Impossible. Word in the locker room is, Susie Jenkins took a purity pledge and she only takes it up the butt.
11. Either that or the kids were forced by the asinine policy to actually acknowledge the existence of menstruation.
13. Come on, all the girls in the school are going to start carrying purses the same week so as not to reveal their late-bloomer status, and Susie would still carry hers into her second trimester if she got knocked up. If she stop carrying her purse it's only to scare Bobby into ponying up for condoms.
Too late, but another angle on this: when did it become common for any bit of administrative idiocy in a public school somewhere to become national news? And when these stories run, are they mostly just reinforcing the view that public education is systematically screwed up?
28: Public education IS systematically screwed up, so it's hard NOT to reinforce that view. Since when has government or bureaucrats ever been more responsive than private firms that have to worry about customary satisfaction?