Editor’s Note: The opinions and attitudes expressed by the author are those of the author and not necessarily of the publication’s editorial board. This segment is part of a series of opinions by Alex Carter entitled “Danger Zone.” There may not be any real or imminent danger, nor is clicking on this story necessarily going to result in some harm to you or your computer. However, a hardhat and safety goggles are recommended.

Recently, an anonymous commenter on our site got my noodle working on the question of whether Spirit Week is really news.

An opinionated “Guest” commented on our story “ASB to recount Spirit Week scores.” Guest was unhappy with the Paly Voice’s “intense” coverage of Spirit Week.

Guest had three major complaints. First, Spirit Week coverage is “boring and irritating” because the result is predetermined. Second, “more newsworthy topics exist”. Third, journalists should not simply “cater to their readers’ prejudices,” but work to influence their readership (presumably for the better). 

Well, Guest, I think you are wrong!

As a side note, Guest, you should refrain from anonymity. Anonymity is bad for our comments section, and indicates that you are not sufficiently proud of your opinion to tack your name to it. Guest, you have plenty to be proud of, no need for the secrecy.

Obviously Guest is welcome to his or her opinion – he or she is clearly not a fan of Spirit Week – but to suggest that we should not intensively cover Spirit Week is silly.

Guest is my opponent. Like the debater that I am, I will now go through each of the arguments and respond to them.

Against Guest’s objection that Spirit Week is boring because everyone knows who will win, I have two things to say. 

First, the majority of Paly students are not bored by watching the point tallies come in day by day. The Voice always enjoys a huge bump in readership during Spirit Week because people do enjoy our coverage and care about what happens, even if seniors are destined to win.

Second, there is no reason to believe that the results of Spirit Week are fixed! Seniors this year are clearly the best class, so they may deserve to win, but that does not mean that the outcome is certain. The sophomore surge to first place on Friday should be sufficient proof of this.

Now, the second objection that Guest makes is interesting. Guest says that there are more important things going on, and brings up the recent teacher complaints about class size increases and the new location of the Aspire East Palo Alto Phoenix Academy, noting that Palo Alto Online has published stories about those events, but the Paly Voice has not.

Against this argument, I have only one thing to say. There is something to be said for jurisdiction in journalism. We are the Paly Voice. It is not our job, as a publication, to write about every event that goes on in the world, even if those things are important. We pride ourselves on producing Paly-relevant news. Now clearly, relevance is in the eye of the beholder, but I think it is safe to say that Paly students care about Spirit Week. Paly students do not care nearly as much about what goes on in other schools like the EPA charter school (we don’t write stories about Gunn’s homecoming, do we?) or in elementary schools (the class size report was primarily focused on elementary school classes).

Going further with the jurisdiction concept, I would posit that there are much more “important” things going on than a relocating charter school or rising class sizes in a single district. I am personally very interested in the Republican primaries and Muammar Gaddafi’s recent death. But I would never hit up Palo Alto Online for that kind of national-scale news, because they don’t write about it! In the same way that Palo Alto Online sticks to issues that directly affect our city, I think it is proper for the Paly Voice to focus on issues that directly affect our school.

To Guest’s final complaint, which is that the Voice should try to steer our readership toward more important material instead of catering to existing demand, I have two things to say. 

First, that is not our job! The Paly Voice is not Big Brother. We do not seek to change anyone’s mind with our news coverage (though our opinion pieces are meant for that), nor do we presume to know what is best for our readers. We are just a humble student publication that exists to write stories about what people find interesting. Guest seems to have a different opinion on what constitutes important news, which is acceptable. We will take Guest’s ideas into account. I thank you, Guest.

Second, we at the Paly Voice do indeed consider Spirit Week important. We are not Masters of the Universe who look down our noses at the sometimes-trivial things that high school students do to entertain themselves from time to time. Lest you forget, our staff is made up of high school students who also partake of Spirit Week festivities, and at least some of us actually enjoy the sense of pride and community that arises from Spirit Week activities. So, even if we only wrote what people “need” to read and not what they “want” to read, we would still write about Spirit Week. 

Spirit Week is a cool Paly tradition that many students clearly enjoy. Though there may be disagreement about the purpose of the week itself, I hope that this can help clear up confusion about the purpose of the Voice’s coverage of Spirit Week.