Stupid response to school review

Not sure if this was appropriate for the Bratfree forum, so I put it in here for good measure.

I got bored and was looking for reviews on my old high school, and I decided to submit my own review. I kept it concise and as professional as possible - I had both good and bad things to say.

In a nutshell, I praised the teaching staff because they are all very knowledgable and fair. I had some bad things to say about the office staff, basically describing in the nicest possible way that the vice-principal and principal were more interested in suspending and expelling people than they were in helping kids graduate. And this is very true, but moreso for the vice-principal. If you were not the ideal student to him or if you stood up to him or told him off, he would look for ways to get you into trouble or make up new rules in order to make trouble for you. The honor students and the athletes were the apple of his eye, but his side hobby was making the less-than-stellar students' lives miserable.

A couple days later, I got a response back from the review site admin. The email I got has since been deleted, but this was what they said to me: "We appreciate your review, but we cannot publish it. We prefer reviewers to focus on the positive attributes of the schools they review. Thanks".

Uhh...what? They basically told me to re-submit my review without the negative comments. Now maybe this is just me, but if you were looking into potential high schools and happened across some reviews on said schools, would you not want to know the ups and the downs of each school? No school is perfect and I think the flaws of schools should be highlighted as much as the upsides.

Needless to say, I will not re-submitting my review. I'm not going to lie by omission. I understand they probably figured I wrote the review based on some personal issues I had with the staff (which I did have issues with them), but I was not writing in anger. I was not the only person to fall victim to the vice-Nazi's assholery.

While this is incredible, it's not unbelievable. I have to swallow my own tongue when asked about my catholic high school, their "guidance counselor" and their "administration". If you have/are a teenager, the sanest way to get through is to see them for what they are. If you can't fight the power, fly under the radar.

A similar thing happened to me back in the day. In my first year of high school (Year 9) a friend and I were randomly one day called into the deputy-principal's office and were screamed at for doing something we hadn't bloody done. We protested our innocence but the woman who had accused us was the mother of another student in our class and they chose to believe her over us, even though we'd never met this woman (it's a long story but I'm shortening it).
I was mightily pissed off at being wrongly accused and never forgot it. So when, years later in my Year 12 English class, our teacher told us we
had to write a true story about something that had happened to us, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about.
So I wrote about what had happened to me in Year 9 and I told the cold hard truth, that we had been given a tongue-lashing over the accusations of some stupid woman we'd never met, and we hadn't done anything wrong and were totally innocent, and how infuriating it had been and how stupid the deputy was to automatically believe that woman and not listen to our response.
I wrote all this in a polite way using good correct English grammar. Of course you know what happened after I handed my paper in. It came back with all sorts of stupid little 'errors' deliberately nitpicked out and a low score. Furthermore the teacher commented after she handed mine back to me, that next time she gave out this assignment she was going to 'make sure we knew there are some topics that can't be written about!'.

Oh and whenever we students were pissed off about something or wanted something to change, we would write up a petition, send it around the school collecting signatures and then hand it to the principal. Of course they didn't like that and promptly banned petitions. It reminds me of the Chinese government!!

[end rant]

I really tried not to write my review out of spite...because the vice-Nazi had an issue with me, for some reason. I think it was because I looked like a real troublemaker (leather chokers, bondage pants, three pounds of eyeliner, an artist), but I didn't have the personality of a troublemaker. I probably could have excelled in honors classes (was in college prep.), I was on the honor roll all the time, got awards for my art and I behaved myself well. I really do think he would have gotten his rocks off to seeing my ass suspended, which is why he started making shit up to try and get me into trouble.

For example, I wore my beloved leather choker for a whole fucking year and even got my class picture taken wearing it before Nazi-man decided to tell me it was off-limits. So I wore a different one because the one he took issue with was my spiked choker, so I figured he didn't want me wearing something sharp. I wore a choker with rings on it instead, and I ended up getting a detention and a threat of suspension if I wore it again. This was after his initial response of the choker being a safety issue to me...he stated that someone could strangle me with it by putting their fingers under it and twisting it tightly around my neck. Yeah...someone is going to twist 1/4" thick leather and a 1/2" thick metal buckle. I asked him if he realized he could be strangled with his necktie and he said simply that his tie and my jewelry were different and that I was wrong.

Both my mom and I raised a stink about it - the principal couldn't believe I "got away with" getting my pipcture taken with the choker on. Our basis of argument was that there was absolutely nothing in the student handbook stating jewelry was a weapon and we said that until it was, I'd continue to wear what I chose since it did not violate the rules. Nazi-Man replied by saying that it is a rule and that if I ever wore my choker again, I'd get suspended for bringing a weapon to school.

I also seemed to be the only person in the school who got into trouble for "PDA" -- there were people making out in the damn stairwells, but I got in-school suspension twice for hugging or standing too close to my then-BF.

I have promised myself that the day that fucker dies, I will go out and celebrate. He is the biggest waste of oxygen I've ever known and the world will ultimately be a little bit better without his retarded ass living in it.

I agree about the dress codes, married with rabbits.

I knew very well what was off-limits in terms of clothes - no hats (including bandannas), no tanktops, tube tops, belly shirts, no revealing tops, no skirts that came above the knee, nothing advocating sex or the use of alcohol or drugs.

I saw plenty of girls walking around in mini-skirts and low-cut shirts and they never once got into trouble. But you know who did get in trouble? A friend of mine who wore a shirt advertising cooking sherry (said it was alcohol-oriented) and my then-BF who wore a racing shirt that had a little Budweiser logo on it...also alcohol-related. Some other guy got into trouble for wearing a shirt with a sexy woman in a bikini holding up a surfboard. I think the vice-Nazi lets the girls get away with stuff because he wants to ogle them, but he'll come down hard on the guys. And the girls who aren't eye candy.

I also dressed extreme in high school, but the teachers and principals didn't give me shit for it. The year after I graduated, this one asshole became the head principal, and this one new student who dressed goth always got called into the office. (My friends who were still there told me about this). The principal was like "Oh, we've had people like YOU here before." Like me? I hope, like myself, she was also an honor student who was a member of marching band, jazz band, orchestra, chorus, and active in the art program.

I really never knew what this guy's problem was with me -- I got good grades, didn't cause trouble (like get into fights, get caught selling drugs in the bathroom, cop an attitude with the teachers, etc.) and was more or less the apple of my art teacher's eye.

I wonder if this has anything to do with him going to the same church as my family and me being the only one who didn't act like a good, upstanding Catholic (I've been atheist since I was 15, but still went to church since my mother forced me to go; Mom never gave me shit for wearing bondage pants to church), I guess that made it okay for him to pick on me. I wanted to scream when I saw him at my grandma's funeral...him and his whole goddamn fucking family. I know they're all members of the same church, but he sure as shit never knew my grandma and I think he just went for appearances' sake.

Even after I graduated, he gave me shit. I occasionally go to the school to see my art teacher, and the teacher said to just come by any time. His class is very very laid back and I could just walk in and hang out for a couple of hours if I wanted to. The first time I went in for a visit (Teacher told me what day I could come in, which was basically any day I wanted to visit), the Nazi stalked me down the hall and waited until I was within about five feet of the art room and told me to get out because I "didn't have an appointment to see ArtTeacher" and that I "couldn't stay because I'd be interrupting his class". And I got told to leave. ArtTeacher asked why I didn't show up and I explained why, and from then on, both he and I made sure Nazi's secretary KNEW I was coming in. haven't had an issue since - I don't even look at his dumb ass when I visit any more.

Yeah, I have a BIG vendetta against the guy. Very big jerk who needs to go take a long walk off a short pier. The actual head principal is firm, but fair; I actually didn't mind the couple of times he gave me a detention because he wasn't condescending and didn't try to tell me in nice words I was stupid and wrong because he was the adult. I just wish Nazi-man didn't have him by the balls.

"Mom never gave me shit for wearing bondage pants to church"

From that comment and the way in which you said your mom backed you up on the choker issue...wow, I think it would be hard to have a cooler Mom. Kudos to her for being supportive of a "different" child!

My mom was a pain in my ass in every other way in my life EXCEPT about my clothes. She dressed like a freak when she was a teen and a twenty-something too, so she never cared if I wore bondage pants or raver pants or leather chokers. Shit, she actually gave me one of her old chokers from way back in the 60s and her lace-up leather boots.

She sucked as a parent in most other ways...screamed at me over anything, told me how much better my other classmates were than me, tried to discourage me from improving my art skills (which eventually became my career), never tried to censor her language around me (which got me into a lot of trouble in school because I didn't know any better), and kept me so sheltered my whole life that I have almost no clue how to act in social situations. I was glad she was and still is okay with the way I dress, but she needed so much more improvement.