I was recently sent a clipping from the Fargo, North Dakota newspaper (The Forum) about a gay couple attending the Fargo South High School’s prom (that may be where my cousins go, actually…). Anyway, the couple - Jakob Paper and Steven Goering - got front page, headline coverage about the event, and while I applaud Fargo for being so open and accepting about this (at least in the media), I was kind of saddened by the whole story. It saddened me how posed the front page picture of the two holding hands was. It saddened me how the only gay couple open enough to go to prom together was exploited by the media, turning their senior prom into more of a public interest piece than a private one. It saddened me that this had to be front page news in the first place.

As a semi-active member of the independent media here in Charlottesville, I have mixed feelings about the entire issue. We see it in legal case after legal case: someone has to be exploited for progress to be made and change to happen. Why can’t we just let gay couples go to prom without making a big deal out of it? Within a decade or two, I honestly don’t think most [public] schools won’t have seen a gay couple at their prom. I also think this will happen whether or not we make such a big deal out of individual events such as this.

I will, however, applaud Jakob and Steven for taking this initiative in a mostly conservatives state. Plus, I really shouldn’t be criticizing The Forum for devoting half their front page to this story, when The Daily Progress just recently devoted and equal amount of headline space to a father and son jumping in a puddle…

InnerJoeJoe

Oh, Alienware. For those of us who have fun customizing computers on Dell.com or other PC sites with no intention of actually buying that 8-Grand behemoth, we all know about Alienware. We visit their site (complete with $5,000 base models) and gawk at the 3Ghz systems with quad-SLI graphics cards and optional LED systems for your case (only $200 extra). And now we can add another gawkable item to that list: 1 TB hard drives. Yup, you can now buy 1 terabyte hard drives from Alienware, or if you’re really crazy, hook them up RAID-style and get a whopping 4TB of storage space on one system. Fuuun.

Because you really need enough storage space to hold 7.61 years of continuous music…

Playfuls.com

So prom is less than a month away now, and apparently my boyfriend and I have already gotten a bunch of requests to go with groups of people to the event. I guess having a gay couple in your prom posse is some sort of achievement now? Or maybe it’s that no gay couple has gone to the CHS prom before, and people want in on a bit of that “fame,” as it is.

Either way, I’m not complaining. I figured I’d start the bidding at $25, work my way up from there. It’s only gonna happen once people - any offers?

Just a shameless marketing reminder about the Charlottesville Bloggers Meet-Up this Saturday at MudHouse on the downtown mall, 2PM. There will be coffee! There will be free wi-fi! You even have an excuse to blog about blogging!

In all seriousness, it should be fun. Bring a friend, bring a laptop, bring your IM client and message me (moriogawa) from across the room if you’re not ready to actually sit down with us. Go to my about me page for a photo so you can recognize me, but I don’t think that’ll be a problem (the blogger t-shirt will probably give me away…).

I am sick of my voice being unheard at my school. Prompted by the recent rumors about the schedule next year at Charlottesville High School, I’ve been trying to find out more about how the administration interacts with the students. The truth: there is no such thing as interaction between those who run the school and those who attend it. Teachers are barely given a say in school policies, let alone the students.

So I thought to myself: who is in charge of student-administration relations? Supposedly, you would think it would be the Student Council Association. Turns out, it’s a complete joke at CHS. In fact, upon examination of Wikipedia’s information on Student Governments, I learned that high school SCA’s are a complete joke across the board. The important members of this organization deal with the responsibilities of organizing fund raisers, dances, and pep rallies. I’m sure glad everyone has this much faith in students’ ability to have intellectual conversations on issues that actually matter in the school… In my opinion, the SCA should actually serve as a bridge between the students and the administration, communicating ideas efficiently in both directions, and getting rid of the disrespect between those two groups which is inevitable when so much secrecy surrounds them.

This new schedule for the coming year, for example. I have heard countless rumors on what it will be like, the number of periods, how those periods will be broken up… Many of them so obviously false (considering they contradict both what I’ve heard from teachers and the vision of the new superintendent) I can’t believe people are believing them. What we need is an effective form of communication that the administration can use to inform students on what’s going on. I can’t tell you how much class time has been wasted over the past week with students asking teachers about the new schedule. Simple way to get that time back: just tell the students straight up what’s happening to them. Then again, why should I as a student expect this kind of respect when the teachers haven’t even been made aware of what’s going on?

I recently read on cvillenews.com that Albemarle County superintendent Pamela Moran was considering starting a blog about school issues. I think this is an excellent idea, and one of the only ways to foster the direct communication between the administration and the public that is required in order to make informed, democratic decisions on school issues. The fact is, schools are afraid of having bilateral discussions with the student, fearing an undermining of authority. This is sad. I was conducting an interview a few weeks ago with a teacher at CHS, and he insisted that he be allowed to see the story before it was published, “to make sure he communicated clearly what he was trying to say.” In other words, he wanted to ensure that my story did not paint a negative view of the schools, because as a faculty member, he could get in trouble for speaking to the media about school issues. Again, this is sad.

Tomorrow, I plan on tracking down the Assistant Principle at CHS and asking her to communicate the true information directly to the public. If she won’t talk to me as a student, I’ll ask as a member of the Charlottesville independent media. For the sake of my faith in the school system, I hope she responds.