Power trip: Principal suspends seniors for riding bikes to school

By David McElroy · June 2, 2012

Many schools have some version of a tradition involving a senior prank. Kenowa Hills High School in Walker, Mich., has such a tradition, but this year’s seniors decided to do something creative, fun and non-destructive. Instead of painting lockers or blowing up a toilet or moving furniture to the top of the building — or any of the typical crazy high school ideas — these kids decided that they’d all ride bikes to their very last day of school.

About 60 seniors rode bikes that day. They talked to local police ahead of time, who had a car meet them for the mini-parade and ride behind them for safety. They even invited Mayor Rob VerHeulen, who joined and rode along with them in the police car. It sounds like a great idea. There was only one problem.

Nobody was taking into account the giant egos and control freakery of the school’s administration.

After the students got to school, principal Katie Pennington suspended all of them for the day, denying some of them the right to take their final exams. She didn’t let them participate in a local tradition called “senior walk” and she even threatened not to allow them to participate in graduation ceremonies — all because they legally rode bikes on public roads with a police escort. Why? Because nobody told her about it ahead of time.

The principal claims it was all about safety. She said the students were backing up traffic and causing others to be late for school. Oddly, police didn’t seem to see it as a safety issue. It was just the control freak principal, because nobody asked her permission. The local television station asked the school superintendent whether the suspensions were really about safety or if they were about showing the students who’s in charge.

“It’s a combination…certainly a combination of both,” the superintendent said.

Parents were understandably outraged. After a day of dealing with angry parents and an outraged public, the principal backed down and apologized. Her written apology (PDF) doesn’t sound really heartfelt to me, but who knows?

I’ve known of a lot of school administrators such as this principal. (Fortunately, I had a reasonable principal in high school who wasn’t looking to demonstrate his authority. If it hadn’t been for his relaxed attitude, I could have ended up in jail one night. But that’s another story.) For some reason, little Napoleons are frequently elevated to positions of power in schools. Their concerns seem to be about rules and control, not actual education or helping kids.

Someone needs to clip this principal’s wings — along with those of the superintendent. Someone needs to remind them that their job is to shepherd students, not act as prison guards.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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