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The Paly Voice

The Student News Site of Palo Alto High School

The Paly Voice

The Student News Site of Palo Alto High School

The Paly Voice

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Paly tolerance, or lack thereof

Palo Alto prides itself in being an open-minded and liberal town. This sentiment carries over to Palo Alto High School. Unfortunately, the school and this conviction are often mutually exclusive.

Before accusations that I am a "Bush hugger" come flooding in, I suppose background explaining my beliefs would be appropriate. I am an independent conservative with no party affiliation. Despite popular Palo Alto myth, not all people right of center are obstinate dolts that enjoy invading small countries. I slightly preferred Bush to Kerry in the 2004 elections, but my reasoning is beyond the scope of this article. I do not view liberals as traitors or commies outside of lighthearted sarcasm. However, they do appear to be an prodigious horde.

A recent Verde survey showed Palo Alto High School is a predominantly liberal school, with over three fourths supporting the Democratic Party in the 2004 elections. Unfortunately, the consequences of Paly’s over-arching political bias political stance are a lack of dissenting opinion (and the subsequent belief that there is no dissention), intolerance for differing opinions when they do appear, and a flagrant disregard for school policies.

According to an anonymous Paly student, a US government teacher showed a highly biased video on the 2000 elections during the 2003-2004 school year. "It was like 80 percent attacks on Republicans, 15 percent informative, and five percent ‘fairness’ attacks on Democrats." This year, the Paly theatre put on the 43 Plays for 43 Presidents play, with a cast member stating, "all the scenes are non-fiction". Perhaps influenced by this claim, at least one teacher (who taught a related subject) offered extra credit to watch the play. The theatre proceeded to portray President Bush as a moronic dictator surrounded by ineffectual advisors plotting world domination with plastic army men. The author of this editorial sincerely hopes that the school considers the above a fictional representation of the President of the United States.

Various liberal signs, buttons, and posters are constantly on display at school. These displays constitute freedom of speech on the part of the students and staff. In California Education Code 7053, the only legal constraint is that "no school district or community college district funds, services, supplies, or equipment shall be used for the purpose of urging the support or defeat of any ballot measure or candidate." Unfortunately, for conservatives at Paly, additional restraints apply. Should conservatives wear a pro-Bush sign, liberal hotheads at Paly undertake their own vigilante efforts to suppress dissent against the Left. Generally, the consequences of expressing pro-Bush leanings range from a four-lettered expletive followed by "you" or "Bush" to a high-pitched, long-winded tongue lashing on the intellectual shortfalls of the person in question. There are also well-documented incidents of liberal demagogues vandalizing cars and ripping items off of students’ to remove pro-Bush paraphernalia. Apparently, nobody minds. Imagine the reaction if a "neo con" tore a pro-Kerry button off a liberal.

One example of left wing biases and pushing the rules to the limit is a student who regularly wears a sweatshirt with a caricature of President Bush and the caption "idiot son of an asshole." The Constitution only protects freedom of speech as long as it is not defamatory, among other criteria. Additionally, the school issued a proclamation in the Palo Alto High School Handbook (2004-2005) that "high personal standards of courtesy, decency, morality, clean language…shall be maintained" at Paly (note: the Constitutionality of the Paly rule has not yet been challenged.) The school does not seem to mind such sweatshirts, as the student claims no disciplinary action has ever resulted from it. The lack of action implies that wearing a sign at Paly stating the sitting President of the United States is an "idiot" and a former President of the United States is an "asshole" is a courteous, decent, moral act that uses clean language. Apparently, none of the five words inside the quote above constitutes profane language, though it is highly doubtful that it is appropriate to refer to anybody as "an asshole" in the presence of a staff member.

More conspicuous is the media bias that exists at Paly. Three of the school’s four major publications, The Campanile, Verde, and The Paly Voice regularly demonstrate a liberal slant. The school medias features "balanced" opinions such as a Voice article comparing the War on Terrorism to the perpetual war waged by ‘Big Brother’ in 1984, a Campanile article presenting half of the facts on why assault weapons must be banned, and a Verde piece condemning supposedly illegal censorship by Republicans. A search of the Voice online archives revealed ten exclusively online political editorials taking a liberal stance, and zero exclusively online editorials with a conservative stance. There has been exactly one political opinion piece published so far in the 2004-2005 school year that was complimentary to Republicans or the Bush administration. A Campanile article expressed this rare opinion, giving reasons for Bush’s reelection. Unfortunately, the Campanile published the article three weeks after the elections took place. Not that it would have made a difference at Paly.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being a liberal. There is nothing inherently wrong with being vociferous about it. However, when such vociferous liberals start impinging upon the Constitutionally granted rights of others and attempting to block opposition, the supposedly open-minded liberals become nothing more than a mob of extremists that cannot open their minds to accept a different opinion.

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