Stobert’s opinions do not represent the Knight Times, KHS or the SBCSD. Read at your own risk. 

Since the beginning of time, students came to school without having to empty their entire book bags to start their day and had a short period of time in the middle of the day to get stuff done that otherwise they wouldn’t have time for. Students could storm courts and fields, bring white boards, and wear JORTS to sporting events. One day all things changed when the class of 2020 became freshman.

Welcome to my TED talk.

Today I will be talking about how the best class to go through Knoch High School (2020) has been getting [swindled, cheated and bamboozled] since day one.

I mean let’s be honest, the class of 2020 trumps any other class. We have athletes, musicians, our class is very competitive academically, and we’re just the most normal class (sorry, not sorry underclassmen). So why [shortchange] us? I’ve been wondering the same thing.

It all started freshman year. As a freshman on the football team, I was excited to play one last year with just my buddies on the ninth grade football team. Little did I know, I wouldn’t. The class of 2020’s freshman year was also the first year freshman had to play varsity football. Now let me put this into perspective. Freshman year me was 5’0, weighed 120 pounds, and I was playing on the same team as Mac Christy. If you don’t know who that is, trust me, he’s big and scary. Our freshman year was also the first year of pay to play. Yeah,[preposterous] pay to play. Meaning we pay fifty dollars to play a sport and the money doesn’t even go to our sport. But you know, it’s okay, at least they also make us pay an absurd $100 for a parking pass and $30 for a drug test that we’re forced to take.

That brings me to my next beef: Drug tests. Probably my least favorite thing added to our school system. Twice a month students are forced to leave class and go pee in a cup. No, this isn’t a form of cruel and unusual punishment, this is a rule implemented into the school system back in 2017. If we don’t need to use the restroom when we are called to take the drug tests, we are forced to stay there, miss class, and chug water. Once again, on top of paying $50 for a sport, $25 for a club, or $100 for a parking pass, WE ARE ALSO FORCED TO PAY FOR A DRUG TEST. Here’s the deal, it is not, in any way, the school’s business what we do outside of school. It should be the parent’s option if they want the drug test done on their kid.

Next, we’ve got the fact that we don’t have channel one. The littlest thing in the middle of the day that we didn’t think much of until it was gone. It was a time that we could finish homework we started the night before, a time to go see teachers, and a time to catch up on sleep. What was channel one replaced with? A generic, no good, useless ten minutes at the beginning of the day. Sure, we actually we get to watch the news each day but not knowing what we’re having for lunch isn’t a problem. What is a problem with high school is stress, which that little break in the middle of the day could possibly relieve some.

Lastly, but certainly not least, each day, students walk through the front doors ten minutes early but are somehow late. How, you may ask? The metal detectors. Students walk in and cram to hopefully find a spot to put their stuff on three little tables for 800 kids. We fight over a total of, like, ten baskets and empty our book bags and get undressed. After all that, the moment of truth comes. We walk through the metal detectors praying to God that our pants don’t fall down only to hear the buzzer go off and the people running it telling us to go back through. We then search through our backpacks and our pockets, go back through and then get sent back around again. Finally, we find a paperclip in our back pocket, throw it away and at last get through. Students then again go and try to find a spot on two little tables in a little skinny hallway, re-pack, and go to class . . . leaving us no time to go to our lockers.

I could honestly keep going. For example, we don’t have a bell and the class of 2020 was the last class to have to pass the Keystone test. I’ll save that for another time though. In conclusion, we got rekt.