Pettiness and Power

Wherein Our Heroine is Just Aghast.

"As usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage."

- John Locke (1632–1704)

In my last job, a perennial and thorny problem caused much head-scratching, strategizing and frustration. The problem was not budgets, resource allocations, or business planning. The problem was The Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper was basically a petty tyrant with a tiny, but pernicious power: access. The Gatekeeper's favorite word was "No." These sad little monsters knew their only power was that of denial, and they used it unscrupulously and often. There was generally little reason for the constant denials: having the power was excuse enough to use it. Often, when you finally were able to meet the August Personage whose portals they guarded, you found out that the Gatekeeper had reached far beyond what they were supposed to do, that they had said "No" far too often and to the wrong people. In the worst cases, Gatekeepers lost their jobs.

I sometimes used to wonder, "What happens when Gatekeepers have more power?" Unfortunately, (via) I have my answer. The principal of Rio Rancho High School in New Mexico seems to be a gatekeeper run amok. Among other things, he has suspended a student for the offense of reciting her own poem: a poem whose offense was that it was critical of the Iraq war. He has ordered her mother to destroy all of the child's other poetry (she has refused, but as she is also a teacher, her job may be in jeopardy). He has torn down posters by art students because they express opinions other than his own. He has effectively fired the teachers who supported the poetry and art students by not renewing their contracts. And he has refused to forward at least one teacher's credentials to a school which would now like to hire him, thereby rendering the teacher temporarily un-hirable.

That is a truly impressive catalogue of egregiously mean-spirited abuses of power. It takes a perniciously creative mind to think of all the ways you can model unconstitutional and overreaching behavior to a community. I am in awe of the engorged ego which must reside in this sad excuse for humanity. And I hope that the day will not be too far away when this "educator" is ordered by a court of law to sit classes in ninth-grade civics class, where he may presumably learn about a quaint little document he seems to be unaware of: The Bill of Rights.

Posted: Thursday - May 20, 2004 at 07:34 AM | |