AidanDennis.com

5/16/05

For my first entry in the "new" column, I'm gonna kinda cheat.  I actually wrote this months ago(for the first entry for my old column), but at the time I thought it was making too big a deal out of a small issue, and most students would either disagree or not care.  But now, as budget cuts have forced us to eliminated 4 positions, at least one of which belonged to a qualified teacher who now has to search for a new one, and the future of our district is looking grim, I think it has some relevance.  If you think its dumb or pointless, feel free to tell me.  I will write something new after finals, and feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

OK, first one... here goes. This time: local politics. Normally I don’t give a crap because almost nothing happens in Whitewater, but this affects me and it’s re-friggin’-diculous so I think it’s worth mentioning. Whitewater High School: I, like many other students, have mixed feelings on it. More specifically, the Aquatic Center; if you don’t know what it is, it’s fairly self-explanatory. Couple of pools as part of our school’s building; it’s nice. I don’t care that much about it, but since some of you probably are or will be on the swim team, let’s say I like it. Now here’s the problem; it was really expensive to build. That would be OK, but unfortunately it was partially paid for by our school district and they barely have any funds as it is. So when our schools are clearly in desperate need of more money, they build this thing AND sign a contract to subsidize it for $75,000 dollars a year! Now they were supposed to make a profit by getting people to buy memberships or something, but not surprisingly they were wrong. Not enough people care about swimming in Whitewater I guess. Or they’re still going to Fort or the university. Anyway, the point is that it was expensive and not profitable. So after a couple years they’re still losing money and still broke, so what do they do? Try to get some money back of course! How? Well obviously by selling the Aquatic Center, which happens to be attached to our fine educational institution. To whom? Why a health club of course! So they’re tearing up half our parking lot to build a health club... which is going to be attached to our school. For those of you who didn’t already know this, take a second to think about it. WHS , the first school in Wisconsin, possibly in the country, to have a health club attached. I’m so happy I have the honor of attending. The best part: we’re still paying for it. Yes, we COULD legally get out of the contract because it is now part of a separate organization, BUT the geniuses who signed that contract in the first place and decided to sell it aren’t going to. Plus, there’s the risk of a law suit involved in keeping middle-aged men around high-school kids. So to sum it all up: we will have a health club attached to our school, supported by the superb school board that doesn’t even own it anymore. One more time: we’re gonna have a friggin’ health club directly connected to our friggin’ school, and we’re still friggin’ paying for it. I realize this was quite a long rant, but I hope you feel you’ve learned something, and that you share or at least understand my sentiments.

- Aidan Dennis