Blogs

This is a continuation of my journal from the 9/11 school year.  Please see my previous post to read the beginning and my prefacing comments.

The Weekend Before 9/11

Badges?  We don’t need no stinking badges.

At Watsonville High, the-powers-that-be have decided to institute a policy of I. D. badges for security.  All students and staff are supposed to have them displayed above the waist.  This is one of the stupidest policies to date. 

First of all, most school violence happens internally.  Students who attend the school are the ones who fight with and possible shoot the other students.  Yes, we do have a problem with older boyfriends circling the campus in their thrumming automobiles, waiting for their high school girlfriends.  The I. D. badges won’t solve this age old “problem.”  If we keep the older guys off the campus, a big IF, the girls can simply meet them across the street. 

These badges are doomed to failure.  A lot of the staff hate wearing them, so I can imagine how the students are going to warm up to them.  My husband and I invited our friend Roxanne over along with our friends Steve and Jane and their friend Paul.  Roxanne is my colleague. Jane is a display manager at Macy’s.  I’d asked her to bring along some creative ideas for decorating my badge. 

Steve and Paul work for Apple.  (The next day, Paul was meeting the Steve Jobs.)  They were all over the badge’s design. 

“That’s a portrait photo,” Paul remarked.  “You need a closer shot for an I. D.”

“They’re idiotic,” I said.

“The person who approved them is the idiot.”

“Look at this website address at the bottom.  Someone made these mega-cheap for a lot of free advertising,” Steve pointed out.

Paul flexed the thin card.  “These are really cheap.”

Jane and I covered the back of my card with iridescent paper and a sticker of an eye that blinks.  I plan to wear my I. D. backwards in its holder.  My third eye. 

 “Your badges should all just say Sheep,” my husband says.  “You don’t have to wear that thing until your supervisor says it’s that or lose your job.”

The always-fair Roxanne mentions that she thinks the students’ badges will have bar codes on them, so the campus supervisors can quickly enter attendance and tardy problems with students they round up on campus.

“Some student should get a bar code from a bag of Fritos,” Jane pipes up.  “Hey, Fritos, didn’t show up today.”

We have a lot of good laughs, but the truth is, a lot of students simply won’t have their cards.  They’ll forget them or lose them or refuse to wear them, or will carry them, but in their packs.  We have over 3,200 students.  Thirty-two hundred cards, thirty-two hundred punches in the cards, thirty-two hundred lanyards.  The effort to ensure they all have cards will certainly outstrip our former efforts to monitor their behavior.