Chapter 75: The Dangerous Lives of Student Councilmen

Saturday, January 22, 1983

When we awoke, we lingered a bit in bed, uncharacteristically. I had something on my mind, and Angie — of course — caught it.

“What’re you thinking about, bro?”

I smiled. “School Board.”

“Yuck! That isn’t a pleasant thought. I’d hoped it was a good dream or something.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”

“Huh?”

“I dreamed about getting involved in the election. It’s not like it hasn’t been on my mind, after all, and then there’s the serendipity of meeting Mr. Brandt.”

“Who is kinda conservative, right?”

I nodded. “Much more on education than social matters, though. I mean, I’m nearly certain. I’m wondering if encouraging him to run against one of the two social conservatives would be a good thing.”

“Um ... maybe?”

“Look, if I’m reading him right, he’s mostly against teaching ‘Newer New Math’ or the like, at least until it’s proven. Some things they taught my kids were just awful, and you know I don’t mean social issues. I mean math techniques that made it slower and harder to solve problems and also kept kids from actually learning what the numbers were doing. Things like that. I mean, I suppose there are negatives, like ... he’d probably want kids to keep on diagramming way too many sentences. But, still. I’m a little conservative on things like math and science myself. Teach the facts, teach what works, and stop gumming things up.”

She nodded. “I can see that. I wouldn’t want someone too opposed to experimentation, but...”

“If something new has been proven to work quite a few places, bring it in, but carefully. Which, I suppose, is what we’re saying about hair color, but that’s harder to back out than teaching some stupid math technique for a year and finding out that it’s stupid. It’s hard to take freedoms away from kids once they’ve tasted them.”

“True enough. We’re the ultimate example, but even discounting us...”

I chuckled. “Definitely. Anyway ... I could see it working. The biggest question for me isn’t whether Mr. Brandt will turn out to be a social stick-in-the-mud and backfire.”

“Really? Because ... that would suck!”

“Milwaukee.”

“Wha ... oh! Oh, I see what you’re saying. Milwaukee losing matters less than your putting money on it, right? But ... more?”

“More. It’s us taking a direct step to affect something a bit bigger, outside school. Somewhat an arbitrary line, since we’ve affected Huong and Rico and others — intentionally, I mean — and obviously changed the paths of other debaters.”

“I see what you mean, though. It’s different. We’d be taking a direct political stand and ... precedent.”

“Precedent. But we’ll take more political stands in the future, and not always support the guy who won our first go-rounds.”

“Hell, no. Some things could use a little change!”

“So ... do we or don’t we?”

“I think ... yes. You already having the idea is swaying me a little, but ... maybe it’s time to stretch our wings a little. If he goes for it, though, you’re explaining it to Dad. And Mom, but on this one, Dad might be the tougher sell.”

I chuckled. “Maybe. He’ll be confused, or not. I think not, but ... I think we did that, too.”

“Huh?”

“See, my first-life version of Dad was pretty much an avowed social conservative until the 2000s, when things started getting a little too conservative for him, and for Mom. Not that the conservatives were winning, just ... their agenda was more and more restrictive. Oh, he agreed with Doctor Ott that we shouldn’t be legislating morality, but ... still. It’d be complicated. This Dad is ahead of the curve, that way, because we’re more openly accepting of really different things, and because I got Doctor Ott to speak on behalf of Lizzie.”

“But we’d be supporting a ‘conservative’ candidate.”

“Right. I guess I answered the wrong question. I meant, he’ll be ok with our trying to unseat the moral conservatives. But I still mean the other, too. First-life Dad, in 1983, would’ve had much more trouble separating an educational conservative from a social conservative. That version would’ve wanted the whole package, the way he thinks Reagan is the whole package.”

“Don’t bad-mouth Reagan to Dad!”

“Definitely not!” I said, grinning. “I wouldn’t, anyway. But Dad isn’t ready to see — and may not ever be, really — that Reagan is actually making the federal government bigger and more expensive, and is doing so by deficit spending. Dad chooses not to see that, because it’d undermine Reagan in his eyes. I think he knows, at some level, but refuses to know, making the excuse that it’s temporary and the economy will boom so much that it’ll pay back the borrowing. And ... it will boom, but we won’t pay back the borrowing.”

“Pretty much they never do.”

“Pretty much, yeah. Occasionally, but ... not too often. Bill Clinton actually balanced the budget for one year, though the Republicans partly pushed that on him. Still, he had a lot to do with it.”

“I kinda liked him, except ... I mean, c’mon. Even I call some of those girls ‘bimbos’.”

I chuckled. “He was famous for that, and it eventually made him toxic to a lot of people. Okay, enough of future politics. Current politics — aye or nay?”

“Aye. Let’s do this. Mostly quietly, but it won’t stay completely quiet.”

“Can’t, but I agree. Mostly.”

I headed over to Brandt’s Books around one. Obviously, there was a chance I’d miss Mr. Brandt, who couldn’t be there every minute, but my guess was that Saturday was a busy day for a bookseller. He seemed like the sort of person who wanted to greet the regular customers.

Indeed, he was behind the counter when I got there. There were a few shoppers as well, but no one currently talking to him. He recognized me when I came in, of course, and smiled and waved.

“Hello, Steve! It’s good to see you. What can I help you with?”

“In this case, it may be more the opposite.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You mentioned running for School Board. I wanted to see if you were still interested.”

“Interested? Definitely. But I don’t have the connections to really make a run at it. It’s not that expensive, it’s more ... time, manpower, all that. And money plays into it. I’d have to raise money, and I don’t have the time for that, either.”

He paused, then looked at me. “And you’re considering proposing a way to make it possible. Why? I’d have thought you’d have backed someone more ... liberal.”

“I think we’d need to talk. If I’m right, which I might not be, your sort of ‘conservative’ views aren’t that far off mine, and — while you might not be as liberal as I am — I think we’d have common ground there, too.”

“And ... this cycle, I’d be knocking off someone even more conservative?”

I nodded.

“Let me call my assistant. Helen!”

I chuckled inwardly at that. Too many Helens! But I was unlikely to spend a lot of time talking with this one, most likely.

A fortyish woman came over, smiling. “What do you need, boss?”

“Can you watch the register for a bit while Steve and I go talk?”

She smiled at me. “Sure. I was just filing some misplaced books. I can do that later.”

He led me back to his office, which was (unsurprisingly) full of books on nearly every surface. He moved a stack from a guest chair, then beckoned me to sit.

“I guess I’ll start. I want discipline, standards, and accountability. Teaching methods need to work. No drugs, or at least no pushers, and... ‘hooligans’ is the word when I was growing up. I’m aware of how many kids use pot, and I doubt they could kick it completely off campus without prison-camp tactics, but ... less. No bullies. Someone who’s caught bullying another student gets suspended, progressively more each time. I think just physically, though emotionally is just as bad, but ... there are freedom of speech issues, and just cutting back the physical stuff will help.”

I nodded. “I don’t have a problem with anything that you said, though I can see places we might clash lurking in there.”

“I’ll finish, then we can discuss them. I really don’t care who kisses who. In some ways, I wish no one was kissing anyone — it’s a school, not a singles’ bar! — but, heck, my school had plenty of kissing and we came out fine. It’s more ... respect. Students should respect the teachers, and teachers should respect the students as long as they behave, too. Teachers should respect what we know works in teaching. Administrators should respect everyone — parents by acting ‘in loco parentis’, teachers by letting them teach, and students by keeping them safe and able to learn.”

“Still good.”

He smiled. “So ... where are we going to clash?”

“Dress code, perhaps. We’d like to liberalize it. Nothing scandalous, and we have quite a lot of research showing that it won’t harm education, but it’s a big change around here.”

“Interesting. I’d have to see the research, but ... provisionally ... well. Standards are changing, and I’m aware of that. In some ways people are more conservative now than in the 60s, after all.”

“True enough. And some of what we’re saying is just common sense — if the cheerleaders can wear a certain skirt length in class, why can’t any girl? And if other girls can’t, why are girls who are representing the school allowed to do something that would violate the dress code otherwise?”

“That’s a very good point!”

“Being direct ... you’re right. I’d prefer to get either social conservative off the School Board. Maybe both of them. I don’t think that things are going to just go away. We have students like Lizzie, and they don’t want to hide, be bullied, or excluded, or belittled. Our Student Council is built around being a voice for students and trying to make changes — good ones, but we’re not the ‘go along to get along’ group that’s been there before. That means ... conflict. It’ll be easier for us and for Principal Riggs if the conflict is over what works, rather than what their reading of the Bible says is correct.”

“I was wondering where you were going to get blunt,” he said, chuckling. “That last part counts! I’m religious, and of course that affects how I think, but I agree with you — the public schools are secular, and trying to run them based on one religion or another is bad. Plus, it’s a violation of the First Amendment, in my opinion.”

I nodded. “That was my pastor, after all. Obviously, I’m not in lock-step with everything our church teaches, but I’m religious, too.”

“Even if you help ... I can’t, you know, feel obligated to take your side...”

“I’m not asking that. Oh, I’d be disappointed if we wound up on opposite sides of something big, but I’ll have to hope that won’t happen. The other thing is, I’m not a big liberal on teaching methods or the like. I could probably find someone really radical, but I’d probably disagree just as much, maybe more. None of us on Student Council want to harm our school, or any school. We want Memorial to still be great in twenty, thirty, forty years. Changing teaching standards risks that, but — in my opinion, at least — so does trying to make it more religious.”

“What about, say, a student Bible study? I mean, meeting in a classroom?”

“Honestly, it seems like they would want to do that at a church, but if other student clubs can use a classroom after school, why couldn’t they? As long as it’s equal opportunity and there’s no preference, I think that’s fine. If Bible studies are fine, but an atheist group isn’t, then I have a problem.”

He nodded. “We can go on and on with hypothetical situations, but I think we’re on the same page. So ... what are you proposing?”

“I don’t have all of the pieces together yet, but I think I can find people who would make phone calls, put out signs, that sort of thing. And donate to fund signs and other materials. The biggest part of it will really be on you — you’ll have to speak to pretty much every P.T.A. and any other parent group you can possibly find, and that’ll take time and effort.”

He nodded. “I’d gotten that far, and ... I think I can do that. No ... I know I can do that. It’s all the rest. If you’re serious, that would change things. By the way, this seems a bit surreal, given your age, but you’re pretty formidable for a ... sixteen-year-old?”

“Sixteen for another four months, yes.”

“I wouldn’t have dreamed of fighting the School Board when I was sixteen, but more power to you.”

“Oh, I’m not fighting. I’m getting you to fight them,” I said, grinning.

“You have a point there,” he said, chuckling a bit. “So ... what next?”

“With your permission — meaning referencing you, by name — I’ll see what I can line up, both volunteers and maybe funding. I’m not sure how many people would want to wait until you’re formally a candidate, though.”

He nodded. “And I guess I’ll wait until I hear back from you.”

“It’ll be no later than February 7th. The filing deadline is the 11th, so you’ll need time to decide on whether to jump in or not.”

“Cutting it close, but I understand that.”

I shrugged. “We filed for Student Council at the last possible minute. I can see the point of jumping in early, but if you can’t get in early...”

“Get in late and maximize the surprise. I can see that.”

We both stood and shook hands.

“Thanks, Steve. I really did want to do this. There’s so much unnecessary ... mess ... in the junior highs, at least. We can do better. We should do better!”

“And that, right there, is the message the P.T.A. parents will want. Everyone knows Spring Branch I.S.D. is great, but pointing out the places it can be even better is a winner. Based on your example as well as my parents, I imagine many of them know the junior highs are a mess. That’s something that’ll resonate.”