Why on earth should I give a fuck about a pack of spoilt rich kids behaving as such? Maybe I read The Age too much, but this has received national attention. Everyone is behaving as though these four-wheel-drinking-and-driving P-platers were going to behave any differently come muck-up day in a school which stakes most of its reputation upon the stunned mullets who managed to get a horse onto a balcony. Maybe they heard it was going to push back more, I don't know.
Xavier College famously suspended a couple of hundred of its larger breed of hormonal grunts earlier this week for creating a ruckus and breaking things in a posh area. Good. Except bad, because they all got to toddle off home to their Playstation 3s, their porn and their Sweet Sixteen Lexi to wait for Father to return home and reallign the planets so that the old scholars don't suffer the embarrassment of a thin reunion dinner ten years down the road.
Of course their parents all went bananas and threatened to sue if their little princes weren't allowed to take their $100,000 exams.
Boys + puberty + confined spaces - girls - responsibility + alcohol = a bunch of fuckwitted, blazer-clad penises running around your suburb and, given time and more money, your planet, fucking up your shit.
This is news?
How about " 200 Xavier students involved in a riot earlier this week were expelled for bringing the school into disrepute. "They will no longer be welcome on school property," said the principal today. "The expelled students may be able to access other options for completing their expensive education, but those options will only be open to these young men after a full year of community service."
How does that sound?
Ahhhh ....
***
Update - GTH - Point to Shippy for the creativity of the answer. I'm actually just giving him a credit because I don't understand it.
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An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test
Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
Muck up days should be banned. Forever.
ReplyDeleteWhat's with the double blind act? There are none so blind as those who will not see?
"In marketing, a blind taste test is often used as a tool for companies to compare their brand to another brand. Double-blind describes an especially stringent way of conducting an experiment, usually on human subjects, in an attempt to eliminate subjective bias on the part of both experimental subjects and the experimenters."
ReplyDeleteThus, you have applied double blind standards and not looked at the name of the school or any details to decide they were wankers?
Having gone to a public school and embarked on a muck-up day that may have gone a little too far. A few of the pranks included steers and sheep being fenced in around the administration office, dying the school oval with red writing (Red Eye), putting up mis-spelled Election signs up containing the picture of one of our more reserved teachers (picture supplied by Computer Lady - aged 60+ - she thought it was a great idea). The final straw was when some muck-uppers tipped over some lockers. Considering it was 2001, and I was a little naive, a mate and I dressed as Osama Bin Laden. In hindsight, it probably wasn't the best thing to go as, but hindsight is a valuable thing. Muck-up day from then on was cancelled, it was next year only a BBQ day. Oops.
ReplyDeleteGTH: I'm going with poker school for dummies - blind, double blind bets behind the dealer.
River - Good luck trying to get kids to stop mucking around.
ReplyDeleteExcellent GTH foray ...
Miles - I looked at the school name when I wrote the post and the nine dozen times I read about "rich boys have poorly supervised much up day". I don't need details to know that the amount of column inches given over to this nothing story is indicative of the all around shock that seems to have been felt because the suspended boys should have known better because of their prestigious education. The hook of the story was the great number of students suspended.
Ten students chucking beer bottles isn't really news unless they were chucking them at something valuable (property, defenceless animals, children, etc). Two hundred students chucking beer bottles at anything is news because there are a shitload of them, but even that goes away after a while.
This whole thing seems to me to be news because of where they came from and the fact that yet again, a school backed down on its toothless threats to suspend students from exams because their parents go crazy and threaten legal action instead of turning to their sons and saying "You knew the rules. You could have chosen not to be involved. Wear it."
If those kids aren't wankers now (purely for the fact that they were chucking beer bottles), they will be in the future because none of them have been charged, punished or held publicly accountable in the same way that the school and its representative teachers and staff were.
Shippy - Yeah, I reckon I read about you in the paper ...
I did nothing for muck up. I don't think anyone could be bothered. A mate of mine did nip into school one night with some grass killer and write "(teacher's name) Sucks" on the prized grass cricket pitch.
I thought that was cool.
My favourite bit of the whole coverage was this - "famous students include the son of Neil Balme, former Melbourne coach..."
ReplyDeleteThat's just excellent isn't, not since they sent AFL reporter Mark Robinson to Bali to report on the bombings four years on (result: the people don't know anything about AFL) has their been such a gratitious cross over between football, a non story, and the demolition of property in a pointless way (I love double blind taste tests though - the flat one is always Pepsi)
That moustache in the header image is creeping me out
ReplyDeleteWe wrecked a mural that covered the main wall of the library building by painting over it. I can't remember whether I painted my name on it or whether someone else did. All I know is when it was finished, it was signed by me
GTH confusion: Wikipedia (hold 'em poker) = Big Blind.
ReplyDelete