I had first noticed this oddity during a fire drill in late May, when my history class evacuated from the library computer lab and stood around the teacher’s parking lot chatting. I looked back at the gaping library windows and realized that the library only took up half of the building. Determined to see what was there, I spent most of my remaining fifth periods getting various people’s permission to access this mystery space.

Finally, on the last day of school, I met my guide to this cavern, the school’s Custodial Engineer Dave Hodsdon, my “friend” from spirit hallway setups and the only person I know of to have seen that place. I thought the way was a trapdoor concealed in the library copy room, but he assured me it didn’t lead anywhere and lead me to Ms. Butler’s room, on the northern part of the second floor. After a quick chat, we climbed out the window and walked across the roof of the hallway that lead to the library on the first floor, and, looking over the brick ridge, saw my classmates discussing their summer plans by the main entrance, oblivious to my presence.

Mr. Hodsdon unlocked a door awkwardly cut into the brick structure, and we were in what had once been the highest seats of a grand auditorium—the place with the art deco ceilings. It was covered in plywood and scaffolding, and it was impossible for me to believe that half a century ago kids had sat on these bleachers and watched a performance or a spirit rally or whatever they did at assemblies at Lincoln High School during World War One when the school and the auditorium were new.

We went up a ladder and I found myself above the art deco ceiling in a sort of attic. Mr. Hodsdon led me under several sets of steel beams to a drop-off where I could see a network of lights and ceiling tiles twenty feet below. I felt like I was exploring a castle and had come across a mass of offices.

He gestured toward the various rooms. There was N206, N207, the library’s computer room, the art room, and a bunch of other rooms. Somewhere twenty-five feet below us, kids were lining up to give books to Ms. Woodward so they could get their report cards or graduate.

The most amazing part, though, was the graffiti. The classes of ’49 through ’51 had somehow managed to climb up there and spray paint their names. Mike Teece ’50. Dick Johnson ’51. The drunken high school badasses who had tagged this school were now in their seventies.

After I left, I went back to the parking lot and tried to picture the auditorium in the North Wing before the library and the false ceiling were put in to save money on heat. With the huge columns of intricate glass windows and cascading bleachers in the red brick building, it must have been much better than the drab gym where we went for assemblies. I tried to imagine the inside of the school, too, without the glowing white paint everywhere.

I went with some friends to see the gym under the library, where yoga classes were held. None of us had been there before. We saw more relics of the old days, too: a room with a solid marble shower stall and a large toilet stall and a socket where the ancient toilet had been ripped that contained a copy machine. Further on was the locked teacher’s lounge, and a large rec room with ping-pong and foosball tables.

There was so much of the Lincoln building that we hadn’t seen as students, and a lot that we were probably missing. I was worried that the new building would be too new, too clean, too characterless. There would be no more upper gym with graffiti from students who had graduated before I was born.

Even this ping-pong room was new to me. I had heard rumors of it, but never been here. Who used this place? Teachers? Administration? People from the retirement home? I was pondering this when Mr. Hamilton interrupted our game of ping-pong. I asked him why kids weren’t allowed here, or even told of its existence.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just one of those things that’s off limits.”

How the [expletive] did you get into Brown and Yale?

I was wondering if you would ask that. I really think that out of all the people that applied to Brown and Yale I know, anyone could have gotten in. I believe that I am really qualified, but I also believe that there are a lot of other qualified people there. You know, for one reason or another, maybe their essay wasn’t quite up to snuff or maybe the admissions person had a beef with some specific thing in their application. I think I got in just on the strength of all of the different activities that I do. I consider myself kind of a Renaissance Man. I just play the field a lot, so apparently colleges like that.

What’s it like at Brown and Yale? What are the kids like? Because here it just seems like a lot of nerdy antisocial people get in, you withstanding of course.

Well thank you, Mario. Everyone at Brown seemed really easygoing and really comfortable with themselves. There was no pressure there to fit into a certain kind of social scene like you might think at some colleges.

I actually didn’t visit Yale because I got a really bad case of food poisoning coming back from Brown. And it wasn’t from Brown, I’m pretty sure, because I ate at this pretty sketchy Italian restaurant the night before I left.

Those Italians…What exactly is the mission of the Watchdog?

Well it was an idea that I got at the end of my junior year. I was on the Messenger and that was great. But there wasn’t really anyone who seemed interested in writing about politics and issues of the day in the editorial section. So I thought “You know, there’s room for another publication at Garfield.” I didn’t want to, in any way, compete with the Messenger, but I wanted to create something that would supplement it. The mission of the Watchdog is to have an open forum where anyone can submit their ideas about politics, any opinions: left, right, center, conservative, liberal, and we’ll consider all articles equally and basically there’s no permanent staff so anyone who wants to write can get their stuff published. It’s just a really open thing.

What proportion of the students do you think are interested in the Watchdog?

I think one of our biggest problems is reaching out to the entire Garfield community. As anyone knows who has read the Watchdog, most of our writers are former APP students, mostly white, and I’d really like to see more of a broader representation of different viewpoints and different cultures. We’ve done a little outreach, I guess. We have a Facebook group, but most people using Facebook are probably fairly well-off. But we put it out there. We go out and we release an issue into the hallways, just handing it out to anybody who wants one.

Do you think that has been your greatest experience at Garfield? If not, what would it be?

I’ve also really had a great time at the music program here at Garfield. I’ve been in the jazz band since my sophomore year. I’ve also played with the jazz choir. It’s been just an amazing learning experience. Playing with the Garfield jazz band is an opportunity that you’re not gonna get at any other schools. The level of dedication that everyone puts in is amazing. One of the things that motivated me to start playing jazz was the jazz band at Garfield. They’re legendary; a success, and at festivals everywhere. Yeah, traveling around the world has just been amazing, obviously. Playing with other kids who are passionate about music; that’s been a really great experience.

Who do you think the bombest girl at Garfield is?

Ohhh…bombest girl at Garfield…well, I’m going to prom with Laura Bogar. She’s pretty attractive. Um, yeah. Put her down.

Very nice. Do you have an interesting personal background? Any interesting personal experience?

Well, I’ve definitely grown up not as well-off as most people that I know. I live in an apartment, which is kind of a separating factor between me and a lot of my friends. I feel like I should be going to a school that’s not quite as rich as Garfield sometimes but then I think about the amazing opportunities that I’ve had here and it’s been a really positive experience overall. My economic background is not quite what the background is of a lot of people I know. That’s been kind of interesting because people often assume if you’re white and you go to Garfield, then you’re from a rich family.

So do you have a full scholarship [for college]?

Yeah, well, I’ve been involved in this really amazing program called the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. I applied at the end of middle school and I have an educational adviser. I give them a plan for all the things I want to do: band trips, or working on web design — I need software for that. And they basically pay for everything that I do. It’s pretty sick. They give me academic advice as well as financial support and it’s continuing into college, so they’re probably going to be offsetting a lot of the costs of going to Brown.

Oh okay. What do you use in your hair? Just water?

Well, you’re not the first person who asked me that. I just had my interview with the Golden Grads. They’re all these really nice elderly people and one of the guys at the end of the interview was just like “I have to ask, who’s your hairstylist?” and I was like “it’s just me.” I don’t add anything to my hair—I do blow-dry it every morning to get a little bit of the initial volume [gestures toward hair] but I don’t use any products. I guess it’s just the natural oils in my hair [which] give it such height.

Honesty Box, the application which allows users to make anonymous, private comments on other users’ pages, allowed Trent to direct his anger at the people he hated the most. “I went on a rampage,” he said. “Anything I didn’t like about someone—I said it.”

One girl received, “You are the stupidest person I ever met. Go back to 3rd grade.” Another got a sexual comment which suggested she was only valued for her appearance. The damage was done—but rest assured, Trent will strike again. “It’s fun,” he says. “It makes me feel better about myself.”

Honesty Box, which was unveiled in June 2007 and now has several million users, is part of a growing trend in online bullying—a kind that cannot be traced. Shrouded in anonymity, aggressors are free to be as brutal as they please, without fear of consequences. Another Facebook application, Compare People, matches two people up against one another in different social categories. Win enough, and you could become “Best to hang out with for a day” among your friends!

Compare People allows anonymous comments which can be viewed publicly, and I’m shocked as I peruse some of them. They range from primitive (“EVERYONE HATES YOU”) to just plain mean. In the “Who would win in a fight?” category, someone writes, “her fat might give her a little leverage, but otherwise no she would die.”

Online bullying is hardly a new phenomenon. A 2006 Seattle P-I article tells about how two Woodinville High School girls’ New Years resolution, posted on their blog, was “to see [another girl] dead.” It also talks about Jane, a Seattle 12-year-old, who committed suicide. Jane had conversed in instant messages to someone with the screen name “ihateyoujaneyousuck.” Still, the ability to leave anonymous messages makes harassment even easier, and brings online bullying even further into the mainstream.

Garfield student Shauna has been a victim of this type of bullying. She was online one night when a hailstorm of Honesty Box messages was sent her way. “You’re so ugly,” they told her. “I hate you, everyone at Garfield hates you, you have no friends, you’re fat and stupid.” Shauna got ten consecutive messages in a row before she realized they were from the same person, and she cried. “I thought that everyone hated me,” she said. “I felt like his opinion reflected everyone’s.”

Anonymity adds a frightening twist to any messages received. Shauna’s aggressor could be someone she knows has hated her for years. They could be her seatmate in third period. They could even be someone Shauna considered a friend. As sophomore Kirra Steinbreuck says, “Honesty Box is just a way for people to stab each other in the back and then pretend to be friends with them.”

I go back to Compare People. I click on “Who is the most confident?” and start to read. “Actually hella self-conscious,” the comment says. “I would know. I’m one of her best friends.”

When Garfield student Lance got a critical Honesty Box comment, he decided to strike back. “You’re really full of yourself,” the girl had written. “Have some appreciation for other people.” Tapping his Caps Lock key, Lance replied, “I WILL [POOP] ON YOUR FACE MOTHER[TRUCKER]”.

“I love Honesty Box,” Lance says. “When someone says something to you, it’s basically a free pass to cuss them out, because it’s not like they had the guts to say it to your face.”

“If I have an issue with something I’ll say it to your face,” echoed sophomore Emily Carroll, “so don’t be afraid to say something to mine!”

This notion may be unrealistic, as simply possessing an Honesty Box may be “asking for it”. As one boy says, “It’s fine if people want others to say things to their face, but if you add Honesty Box, you can’t expect it to be empty, you know?”

Besides, stating something out in the open may not be the best way to ease tension—particularly if it’s still done online. Take the controversy that ensued after one Lakeside girl implied that a Garfield boy was ugly—in an open comment. Several other Bulldogs quickly jumped to defend their classmate, calling her a “Stupid [female organ]” and saying that “Nobody even likes you at your school.” One comment led to another, and before long it was an all-out Facebook brawl.

Many people are able to find alternative ways to deal with this difficult anonymous online conundrum. Sophomore Nick Thompson was appalled when he got this message: “bitch your activities are tight/GAY
im gonna ramrod it in
–sam w”

Fortunately, he was able to discover the culprit and deal with him accordingly.

Others, such as dreamboat senior Carver Low, find that it’s basically a non-issue. In fact, says Carver, “75% of any arrogance I have, I get from Honesty Box. The other 25% comes from Compare People.”

Still, for those of us who aren’t half-Asian boy wonders, Honesty Box comments can be truly emotionally harmful to the victims. If harassment continues, the best course of action may be to simply delete the application and spend less time on Facebook (it would probably be good for you anyway).

Or, you can follow the example of sophomore Riley Mulherkar. “I write myself Honesty Box comments to boost my self esteem,” he says.

Students getting an N or a D in a class have to come up with a plan to bring their grade up before getting the trip excused.

The process of getting the forms turned in properly has caused more problems than filling out the form itself. “It’s really frustrating,” said a junior who spent several hours trying to get a recent trip excused and ended up taking unexcused absences.

“It’s pretty simple and it makes sense, but it wasn’t communicated to the students that there was this new policy so nobody knows to do that until they go into the attendance office,” he said. “And then they’re screwed.”

Several students also reported that teachers were unwilling to sign the form until Mr. Howard signed it, only to have Mr. Howard tell the students to get the teachers to sign it.

In terms of the form’s use, college visits and other such educational trips are excused, but require it to be turned in three days before the absence.

Interestingly, the school policy, dictated by state policy, has been that absences for non-educational purposes—such as vacations—are listed as unexcused. “You never could go on a vacation and say here’s a note,” said Ted Howard. “They always try, but it’s never excused.”

At Garfield, unexcused absences are a hazy area, and are generally the result of taking a vacation without turning in a form, skipping classes, or just being missed in attendance.

But after seven days of unexcused absences in a month or ten days in a year which could include vacation, Washington State’s Becca Bill requires schools to “file a petition in Superior Court against the student, parent, or both.” The bill, designed to keep kids in school, was instituted after the death of thirteen-year old prostitute Becca Hedman in 1993.

In the past, the bill had been somewhat ignored by the school, but currently Mr. Howard is in the process of being audited, so students should be advised to make sure they stay below seven unexcused days.

At the Spring Sports assembly four weeks ago, several members of the marching band made a bold statement when they decided to protest the administration’s decision to not rehire their teacher, Tony Sodano, next year. When junior Rachel Alexander, accompanied by her fellow band members, received the microphone at the assembly, she did not hold back her strong disapproval of Mr. Howard’s decision. Her speech was quickly interrupted by ASG President Ben Kusak, who was asked by the administration to cut her off. It was a struggle for Kusak to grab the microphone from Alexander’s strong grip, so he turned it off and the marching band members exited the stage with their heads held high.

“When Mr. Howard wouldn’t give an answer to why Mr. Sodano’s contract wasn’t being renewed, we decided to bring it to the whole school’s attention so that the administration would be aware that we weren’t happy with the decision” Alexander said.

We weren’t blessed with the fine sounds of the marching band this past assembly as a result of their protest, and neither will we on Purple and White in June. Alexander has little hope for the band, and although she is not in the marching band class, she still believes that protest is the best solution. “I don’t thing we should play [at purple and white] after the way they treated us at the assembly, even though we don’t think Mr. Howard will change his mind,” she said.

Junior Sigrid Williams, another member of the band, first suggested the protest at the assembly and believes that it worked to a certain extent by making the administration look bad for cutting their speech off. Williams, along with the rest of the band, is upset about where the band stands without a teacher for next year.

“He tried very hard to make the programs work, getting help from the administration,” she said. “He was going to make a really good program, and that was all we wanted.”

The marching band has had a new teacher every year for the past four years and when they finally felt some continuity with Mr. Sodano, they were crushed when they found out that he wasn’t returning the next year. “Right now, there is no plan for next year, which is the main reason we’re mad. Mr. Sodano was going to start a band camp, we were going to do parades and competitions and get real uniforms, now we’re back at square one,” Williams said.

In the beginning of the year, most students found Mr. Sodano tough to get along with, and his way of teaching caused a lot of tension within the program. “He started out kind of strict, but he knew that otherwise people would walk all over him. Once you get to know him he’s a really cool guy,” said Alexander.

According to Mr. Howard, Mr. Sodano wasn’t fitting in with the culture of the school. Mr. Sodano said that he was thankful for the surprised support of his students but he felt that it is would not be appropriate to comment on the matter.

“For the high school grad, this becomes a buyers’ market,” said Daniel M. Fogel, president of the University of Vermont.

As Garfield’s seniors wait anxiously for college acceptance letters, some felt cheated when told about the coming change. “It sucks to be ’08 because everything bad happens to us,” said senior Harry Babener, who applied to the UW and several southern colleges with a 2.9 GPA. Had the college field been less competitive, Babener said he would have applied to “a lot more colleges.”

The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICE) says the national trend is “fueled by precipitous drops in the Northeast and Midwest” but is countered by “explosive growth” in areas of the South and West such as Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Utah. Our state’s high school graduation rate is predicted to stay reasonable stable. It is students who apply to East Coast and Mid-West colleges, therefore, who will have an easier time getting in.

Even though most local colleges won’t see much of change in application numbers, they will certainly feel a change in the racial makeup of student body. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of Hispanic high school graduates will jump 54 percent and the number of Asian/Pacific Islanders by 32 percent, while white graduates will actually decrease by 11 percent, and the number of black graduates will experience a 3 per cent growth.

Colleges are bracing for the change, as minority groups are one demographic that they drool over. Cornell University, an Ivy-League school, even sent an admissions officer to live in LA.

“We are most definitely aware of the demographic changes that are in store for the coming years, and think about them often,” said Jim Rawlins, Associate Director for Recruitment and Outreach and Admissions for the University of Washington.

The graduation trends are not a result of more people dropping out of high school. Rather, decreasing birthrates among whites combined with a population boom in Hispanics and Asians to average out to a slightly declining birthrate during the nineties.

Unfortunately, even though it may be easier to gain an acceptance letter from your dream school, paying for it is not about to get easier. “Students may need to worry less about admission but more about costs,” said Rawlins.

When I was younger, I lived in my mind. I went to outer space during school hours. I drew pictures of crazy places and crazy space ships and I went home and built crazy things with Legos.

When your mind is your world like that, you don’t really need a lot of friends. You didn’t need to hang out in big groups and go to parties and stuff unless it was someone’s birthday.

And using your imagination wasn’t necessarily antisocial. I remember in 6th grade my friend and I took turns paying attention in class while the other drew bizarre pictures with gnomes and elves and various other fantasy creatures. I was fascinated by anything that didn’t pertain to reality. I even drew stuff at home and showed it to my friends the next day.

Now whenever I try to doodle it just turns into a lot of lines and blobs. What happened? It’s not just me. I’m not crazy. I’ve talked to other people about it. It probably happened to you to, and you didn’t even notice that your creativity and imagination died by the time you hit seventh grade.

Now, as teenagers, there’s a lot more fun to be had. For instance, many kids take drugs, which isn’t very good for you. More kids hang out and go places. I got my license a couple of months ago, and I’m always cruisin’ somewhere. I mean, sure, you’re using your imagination to think of things to do, but the higher level of imagination, the kind where you can just sit down and have an adventure in your mind or with a piece of paper, is all but gone now.

School has changed, too. In middle school, particularly from seventh grade on, kids need to concentrate on academics more than imagination. Everything starts to get regulated and the teachers attempt to mold you into logical, sensible adults. “Okay, kids,” they say. “No more recess. It’s time to learn how to be a grown-up.”

School stopped being fun and started being a job. You don’t really have all that free time you had back in the day when you could just relax and not worry about anything, and your mind could wander. Indeed, many parents point the finger at school for killing their kid’s imagination and individuality. They send their kid to Montessori or NOVA or some other alternative school. But I’m not convinced that school is the culprit.

Maybe it’s some kind of hormonal influx that comes with puberty. Creativity gives way to acne and teenage angst. But growing up also makes you more conformist because these remnants of your childhood embarrass you. You’re not going to get into the cool crowd by drawing pictures of spaceships – you have to act older than you really are. So we stifle our minds and label creativity as something childish and embarrassing.

And as much as people like to rag on TV and video games for corrupting America’s youth, they aren’t really the problem. If anything, watching TV gave me new ideas and concepts and territories to explore, even if the TV show was some apparently “mindless” cartoon. In fact, most cartoons are just like kids: lighthearted and fun, colorful, and out of left field in the places they explored.

Whatever the factors may be, this phenomenon is pretty much universal. If you look at the great storytellers, new and old, they’re just retelling real events. For example, Mark Twain, literary genius, based most of his stories off past experiences he’d had. Even sci-fi stuff and fantasy is really all the same when you boil it down: it’s just the forces of good against a bunch of lords of darkness or spaceships or orcs or something.

Whatever it is that caused your creative juices to quietly go away, you need to realize that they’re gone. I wish I knew where. It’s really fun being a teenager, but I wish I could get back inside my head. I think it misses me.

The lunchroom staff has been substituting other meat for the beef or going vegetarian. “Instead of beef moo shu we had chicken moo shu,” said lunch lady Deborah.

Most people haven’t noticed that beef has stopped being available, even though it comprises about 25% of the meat served. “If it’s not cheese or a corndog, I’m not touching it,” said senior Adama Seck, who frequently patronizes the lunchroom.

I asked if the corndogs contained beef, but it turns out that they’re not really corndogs at all. The lunchroom staff calls “pancake on a stick,” which is a pancake wrapped around a chicken sausage.

The beef from the downer cows isn’t known to have any sort of disease, and all Seattle School District Beef is checked twice for E. Coli.

As a precaution, the district has so far pulled about 22,000 pounds of beef from school cafeterias, about 5,000 of which come from the downer cow company, Hallmark Meat Packaging.

“We want to err on the side of caution,” said school district spokesman David Tucker to the Seattle Times.

The whole thing was triggered by a YouTube clip produced by the Humane Society showing employees of the Hallmark Meat Packaging Plant prodding cattle with sticks and a forklift so that they can get the cows up to be legally slaughtered because US Department of Agriculture laws say that meat coming from downer cows can’t be processed. Unfortunately, prodding the cows or causing them harm is against the law too, and the law also says that downer cows must be humanely euthanized.

The YouTube clip is basically a bunch of fat, miserable-looking cows being poked or prodded or dragged and a narrator talking about how horrible the whole thing is for five minutes. Let me tell you, those cows were big. They didn’t look very happy, either.

The Hallmark Meat Packaging people supply the Westland Meat Company, and the Westland Meat Company is the second-largest supplier of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program.

“I think that’s fabulous,” said orchestra teacher Marcus Tsutakawa. Many other people around Garfield shared the same opinion.

“I think it’s a very good idea because some people in jazz band want to go on to become pro musicians,” said ‘A’ Jazz Band trumpeter Gabe Martin, who makes up to $400 a month playing gigs and plans to go professional after college. Without jazz band being certified Occ Ed, Martin, who is a junior, would have had to drop some regular classes or music classes to take three Occ Ed classes next year.

After two rounds of paperwork to get his class certified, Annual teacher Mark Lovre is thrilled. “I hope that it allows us to pull from a broader pool of students,” he said. Mr. Lovre explained that Annual teaches students career-related skills such as photography, using publishing software, and getting comfortable in a workplace environment.

The same applies to other classes such as orchestra and jazz. “The amount of time [orchestra kids] invest in music can lead to a career in music just as much as working with computers [can],” said Mr. Tsutakawa, who recalls scrambling to fill his ’08 daughter’s schedule with Occ Eds in addition to orchestra and a language. “Health online at Seattle Central was a pain in the butt,” he added.

There are, however, some restrictions to the new plan. Only juniors and seniors in Orchestra ‘A’ and ’ Jazz Band can receive credit for Occ Ed. “I’m kind of disappointed because you have to be in Orchestra ‘A’,” said a junior in Orchestra ‘B’. Mr. Tsutakawa implemented the rule because Orchestra ‘A’ best prepares students for jobs as professional musicians.

The conflict over Occ Ed had been steadily growing between the non-business-related Occ Ed classes that were just approved and Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes which focus on technical skills such as web design. The CTE classes, which until very recently encompassed all Occ Ed at Garfield, receive state subsidies. Subsidy money is distributed between the school and the School District, and, now that new classes have been certified, the District is worried that it will lose funding from students choosing to take the newly certified classes instead of CTE classes. “If you’re a great teacher, people will still take your class,” said principal Ted Howard II.

Even some staff memberwere shocked. “I was flabbergasted when I heard,” said librarian Janet Woodward. “I would suggest students circulate a petition to protest the decision.”

In addition to the three-dances-per-year rule, the new measure also calls for all dances to be held off campus and for police coverage of the dances to be doubled. While Garfield dances are already held off campus, the increased security measures mean that there will need to be eight police instead of the normal four.

For smaller public schools such as Rainier Beach and Cleveland, the cost of an off-campus venue and the extra cost of security could mean that a school dance will not be financially feasible. Most other Seattle schools typically have four dances per year, and Garfield’s Purple and White dance, if the petition to hold it is approved, will probably cost twenty dollars instead of five or ten.

Howard explained that the new dance rules, which have been under discussion for the past several years, were implemented to combat growing liability associated with school dances. He pointed to increasing violence, not only the recent shootings of Cleveland students, but also incidents occurring at dances of other schools.

“From Ballard dances to Roosevelt dances to Cleveland to Franklin there have been a lot of problems,” said Mr. Howard.

Garfield dances, on the other hand, have been relatively safe and uneventful. “In the last eight years there have been maybe one or two fights,” said Activity Coordinator Peggy Jackson-Williams. A notable exception was after prom last year when some shots were fired into a hotel where Garfield students were partying.

“We run a tight ship and our dances are the best in the city and we have maybe the most of any school,” said Ms. Jackson-Williams. The only problems recently have been with guests from other schools, and ASB hopes to alleviate these by making guests leave their IDs at the door.

The restrictions do not apply to Bubblin’ Brown or the orchestra-sponsored Waltz, but they do include October’s Homecoming in the three-dance-per-year total.

So what are you supposed to do about it? If you’re ’09, suck up to a senior so they’ll ask you to prom. And if you don’t want to face three dances per year, throw a dance party or something. Or if you’re really mad, start a petition. There is a clause in the measure that allows it to be reviewed at the beginning of the school year.