ESHS: Crushed Under the Crippling Effects of Disrespect by Richard Wilk

There is a plague infecting El Segundo High School. This is not a disease of the body but rather of the mind. Its effects can be found on the solemn faces of our classmates as we pass them in the halls and in our teachers as they lecture to a sea of uninterested minds. This is a disease propagated through the dense masses and has affected the hearts and minds of all people in ESHS. This is the infectious disease of disrespect.

This affliction can be best observed in the attitudes of the lower classmen who have seemingly no respect for anyone. They sit in their classes and blatantly disrespect their instructors. I've witnessed these smug punks, who believe they are above everyone else, talk back to and refuse to follow the instructions of their teachers. They seem immune to the threat of punishment, and some even delight in the fact that they receive punishments for their disgraceful behavior! What happened to respect for one's elders?! They are not even polite to the upper classmen, who though are not much older than they, have experienced much more than they have in the short period of time.

This disrespect is shown to other students. During our last rally there were people in the audience who howled during the singing of the national anthem. HOWLED! What kind of decent human being howls while someone is singing the national anthem? That's not only disrespectful to the person in question, but also toward the country, and it is utterly annoying to the people around you. This kind of action is also frequently shown to other students in the classroom environment when they are presenting. It is not uncommon to hear people laughing and snickering during a person's presentation. This is extremely rude, and insulting to the student presenting.

Beyond being rude to our peers in the classroom, this disrespect is shown to presenters during assemblies and in the class. Students can be heard making crude comments, and asking preposterous questions of these presenters just because they get some sort of joy out of humiliating and annoying those poor people. This kind of action is utterly disgraceful. These people make the school look bad. I don't care if those people wish to make themselves look bad, but when they bring the entire student body into the equation, its insulting and rude to everyone involved!

Some sort of greater punishment should be invoked upon these people who insist on disgracing themselves and the school. If teachers were allowed to invoke a more 'physical' punishment upon students, I feel that it would be a greater preventative to their disruptive actions. As it is now, I have seen students who take pride in the fact that they have received detentions. It is clear that that punishment no longer works with any amount of success. I might go so far as to propose that we bring back the paddle and use it liberally to beat the students back onto the correct educational path. The other option is to allow these kinds of actions to run free, and with each new generation entering the ranks of ESHS this behavior will increase. These are our options.