From the editor

A public announcement on behalf of the Liberator, the third "school" paper: We exist. We know that you probably haven't read us yet; our distribution system is fourth-rate and our funding is nearly nothing.

But we've got a talented staff, and a will to persevere... And in this letter, I hope to explain what we're about. We're not against anyone human, to begin with.

What we stand against is hypocrisy, stupidity and bureacucracy; we're the alienated trying to point out the massive flaws in a system that we feel has screwed over nearly every decent human involved in it, including the teachers.

The problem, as we see it? An administration that doesn't care, enforcing rules that don't work, with tactics that don'thelp the students. All the rhetoric in the world about "uniting the West community" and "bridging the gap between cultures" is simply that much more verbal pollution until we're free to dress as we please; free to post and publish without being subject to censorship, and free to walk out of study halls that serve as nothing but hour-long detention camps.

There are a lot of good things about this school. Most students are pretty smart, most of the teachers are competent, and some are even brilliant. The students and teachers have a tradition of working together, hard, to try to accomplish something, to build a true atmosphere of learning. It was like that when Colucci was in charge; hands-of worked.

We don't need meddling from the administration; in fact, West would probably run more smoothly without an upper echelon of paper-shufflers and social engineers, imagining themselves as puppetmasters over our lives. Well, yeah. It's harsh rhetoric, and we don't really want to see all administrators fired. Half would be a good start, though.

So. What are we going to do? We're going to speak the truth as WE see it. We're going to amuse as many people as we can. We're going to kick some rhetorical ass, in the name of the students NOT getting a 4.0, for those NOT members of the student council social club, those NOT planning to be petty paper-shufflers. Look for our next edition. With luck, you'll find a copy. If you don't, call your grade-level office and offer them free phone sex. They'll understand.

Till then!

Editor-In-Chief – Liberator