Don't Look Back in Anger

Some final thoughts from the departing HTP editors

Retroviseur

After three years, I would have to say that Here Title Place is a failure. It didn’t get me loads of easy sex with numerous women. I have yet to receive the sports car that Porsche promised me. My shoe-sponsorship deal with Nike, in which I would be paid $3.5 million to wear the "Ian Ferguson Teen Newspaper Hack" sneaker, has sadly fallen through. 60 Minutes sent back my resume, so I can assume that I am not their first choice to replace Andy Rooney after they pull the plug on his life-support machine.

However, there were a few small successes that I can look back on and be proud of. I think I will always remember the day the first issue came out. Seeing all those copies of what we had written, scattered around the cafe and being read by people was a bit of a thrill. It’s tough to forget all the hours we spent arguing, assembling, and writing articles at Shaw-Han’s house. Hanging around downtown at 2:00 am on a Thusday night, waiting for Kinko’s to finish copying the issue. Rushing around to finish writing an article for some stupid, self-imposed deadline. Hanging around outside Xerox Canada HQ, waiting for our man on the inside to finish copying the issue. All of those lame things we cut out of magazines and stuck on the first issues, like "no more freedom in a cage". Hanging around inside Kinko’s at midnight, waiting for them to finish copying the issue. How our benefit show rocked SO HARD. Arguing with Mr. Pirk in his office, endlessly. All those arguements about HTP in food courts, basements, libraries, etc. How the big "student rally" at Queen’s Park was a total failure, just as we expected. Our CD-ROM, packed full of our issues and some of the best music made by Woodkids.

I guess over and above all of those things, what I like most about HTP was that it provided an outlet for Woodkid talent that couldn’t be found anywhere else. As we put out more and more issues, more and more people came out of the brickwork to write articles, edit the paper, distribute the copies, play at our benefit show, draw cartoons, do layout, film assemblies, help with the CD-ROM, create collages, and more. This school has a bad reputation. It may be ugly from the outside. But, when you give the students inside it a chance to be creative and put their talents together to make something positive and useful, you really get an idea of how The Hoodlands can keep it real.

How Mr. Pirk Ruined My Life

For three years we’ve been speaking out against the atrocities of the Pirk regime, but no story about Mr. Pirk will ever match the unbridled destruction of the one I’m about to tell now.

Three years ago, Mr. Pirk was interviewed in Place Title Here, the official Woodlands newspaper. He talked about turning the school into an ‘academy’, where students would wear uniforms and things like mandatory volunteering would become standard. To a kid in grade eleven, this was tantamount to tyranny. “Man, what THE MAN doesn’t understand, man, is that my clothes are my indviduality! I bet Eddy Vedder never wore a uniform!”, I thought. That was the moment that HTP started. And now, I've left the path to riches that a career in math or science could have provided, and seem destined for the poorhouse. Thanks a lot, Mr. Pirk.

And then it Don'ed on me..

I think our main mission with HTP is to inform the students. For example, here's a piece of information I picked up recently; Do you know those phone/intercom things in every classroom? Well of you wnat to use one of those badboys to broadcast your voice to the entire school, just enter Function 63 and then press 0. Some might argue that a piece of information like that is not legimate free speech, since it is no value to anybody expect those who would play an annoying prank on the school. Some might even go so far as to say that giving out that piece of information is paramount to an advocation of an attack on the school. What people who say things like that are advocating is keeping people inactive by keeping them ignorant. How low an opinion must someone have of the students at this school to assume that the only thing keeping them from playing a prank such as that is the lack of knowledge. Why not just cut out Sexual Education? I'm sure that would fix all the problems we have with teen pregnancy. Maybe if students didn't know how to pull a trigger there wouldn't be any problems with shootings at high schools. If you start abritarily deciding what students should and shouldn't know, then who knows what happens next. You can argue all you want about what is justifiable Free Speech and what isn't, but I tend to give things the benefit of the doubt. You can never have too much free speech. Forget about the consquences, you've just got to get the word out.