Aug 27 2008
Berrish
I am not the president of the United States and I am not a celebrity A-lister.
I have no reason to be followed by cameras considering I never have and never will walk the red carpet. But for some lame reason I know how it feels to be followed by cameras and scrutinized in the public eye…all because I got expelled from high school.
Who gets expelled from high school? When will I ever build up the courage to tell my own children that I got kicked out of high school for good?
It wasn’t because I was caught smoking in the girl’s bathroom or playing hooky one too many times. It was for refusing to answer the administrators’ questions about an incident that occurred off campus.
Don’t get me wrong, this is nothing I am proud of by any means, but the 2003 Powder Puff games at Glenbrook North High School was blown way out of proportion. Kind of like the recent craze of salmonella tainted tomatoes. Or is it the jalapenos?
But on a serious note, this situation was harmful to my reputation, denied my rights to an education, and could have been severely detrimental to my college education. But who cares? The principal of the school didn’t and neither did the superintendent. The schools administration and its board members are all heartless. They turned in and publicly displayed the lives of their students because of one honest “mistake”.
When all the students wore their jerseys to school, teachers and deans simply asked that they turn them inside out. The sign up sheets circulated the hallways, and the home economics teacher provided fat extracted from the meals cooked by students.
And they were trying to kick us out of school for our misbehavior. There are several other punishments that would have taught us the lesson that hazing is not an appropriate initiation into the final year of high school.
What Powder Puff really is, is an annual tradition at many high schools and universities. The game usually involves girls from the junior class against girls in the senior class. T-shirts or Jerseys are usually made up to differentiate the teams. Some schools have the sick tradition of naming their teams after beers like the Heineken Hotties, Budweiser Babes, or even Sam Adams Madams. The tradition has shifted from a school ritual to a pathetic hazing scandal that occurs nationwide.
Our Powder Puff was just like any other year but the younger girls were a bunch of rats. They were little north shore suburban babies that had to run to their mommies.
The incident was repeatedly played out on the radio and television. One celebrity news reporter felt the dire need to cover and balloon this story, which soon made her famous. News reporters sat outside courtrooms and waited for me to walk in and stood on the doorstep of my house twenty four hours a day like they had no other better important story to cover. The news was so dead they had to cover an issue that was not going to affect the lives of any viewer. Nationally and internationally the news cut out scenes from videotaped segments and made them look horrible. They interviewed people and cut out words they were saying to make them sound more horrifying.
We senior girls were featured on Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, and even Oprah. As my life was no longer low profile, my world crumbled. I had no privacy. I felt as though I was inside a room and people were constantly staring at me through a keyhole.
So, although I am not the president of the United States or a celebrity, I know what it feels like to be judged, misunderstood, and misrepresented.
In the end…it made me a stronger person.
