This issue marks our debut at many of the fine educational institutions around our fair city. For those of you unfamiliar with scrape, here's the rundown:

scrape is an underground paper based at Clark High School (that big prison-looking thing.) We began printing about a month ago. Why? So we can express our opinions, a right guaranteed to us under the First Amendment.

We have been the cause of quite a bit of controversy (among both students and administration), which was one of the goals we set out with.

By reading this issue, you should be able to figure out what we are all about. Check out our web page (address on back) for more info.

Thank you, and we hope you enjoy scrape.

Last issue, we ran an article extolling the benefits of using mustard gas (rather than tardy freezes) to subdue those young troublemakers at Clark.

The administration, however, has come up with their own brilliant idea to solve the immense tardy problem. Effective immediately, any student who is tardy will be issued a detention.

And as we all know, tardies are our school's most urgent problem. We can now walk the halls proud, knowing that our best interests are being served.

Congratulations to those hard-working administrators of Clark High School. What would we do without them?

Book Burning in the 90s

by a sophomore at Clark High School

Anyone who has attempted to conduct research through the Internet on a PISD computer has undoubtedly encountered Bess, the canine Internet Nazi. For those of you who don't know (yes, both of you), PISD is extremely paranoid about students getting their hands on information that PISD doesn't necessarily approve of. So, they have set up a web connection through a "family-oriented" proxy server. A proxy server is sort of a middle man when it comes to Internet communications. In layman's terms, PISD computers have to go through their proxy server (Bess) in order to contact the server they are trying to download a page from. Then, if Bess approves, the proxy server will relay that information back to the PISD computer.

Not only does this introduce unnecessary lag, it prevents students from spending any productive time on these computers. In theory, Bess was conceived in order to keep kids from downloading porn. But that is far from the purpose now being served.

Bess has restricted about 75% of the information on the Web. What does this mean? Well, if you are trying to go to a page, chances are, Bess won't let you see it. Any work performed on these computers proves to be only frustratingly futile and counterproductive.

Bess even blocks out entire domains. For instance, anyone going through Bess won't be able to access any pages on the geocities.com server. GeoCities is a service that allows Internet users to set up free web pages. GeoCities currently hosts 1.6 million sites, many of which are education-oriented. Due to our Internet Nazi, we can't see these pages. What is even more ironic is that GeoCities has strict policies regarding pornography and vulgar content. So there is no possibility of finding anything obscene on any of those pages. And yet every single one is blocked.

This is just an example of the countless educational opportunities destroyed by Bess.

Though PISD would like to promote its image of technological awareness, they are extremely naive in their meager attempts. Bess not only destroys any technological potential they might have possessed, the frighteningly right wing pooch denies students the ability to learn. And isn't that what PISD is supposed to be granting us?

So PISD has created a scenario that we are all regrettably familiar with. They have established an environment that not only makes learning damn near impossible, but denies a student the ability to hear new ideas. Why? To steal a line from our monogamically-challenged president, "It's a right wing conspiracy." In the orgy of conservatism that is Plano, Texas, new ideas are more frightening than anthrax-wielding madmen. And if students have the opportunity to learn, they just might do so.

Scary, isn't it?

The Opium of the Masses

by a freshman at Clark High School

Heroin. Chiva. Personally, I don't see too much wrong with it. Everyone has some addiction. Everybody is self-destructive in some way. But our society seems to have a lot of problems with us junkies. To me, the unquestioning demeanor and blind faith of the majority of society is very similar to our heroin addiction.

Through time, people have had to find that special something to fill up the emptiness in their existence. Some choose to fill their void with drugs, while others take the more "acceptable" path: religion.

Religion, a way to explain the unexplainable. Society accepts religion because it is not a "self-destructive" path like drugs. Yet, I believe that religion leads to deterioration of the mind. It stifles our adolescent nature and tells us to accept the Bible (or insert some other holy book here) as the Truth. Religion gives people a spiritual high, but it drags thinking down to new lows. Heroin and other drugs do the same thing. It makes no sense to look down upon the drug addict and glorify the Sunday school teacher; they are essentially the same.

Plano might have a heroin problem, but we need to look at other issues that can destroy the thought process. We must raise our awareness to the endangered intelligence of our peers. It is crucial to question authority such as government and religion. If we forfeit our minds to these things, we are no better off than the heroin addicts we constantly berate.

This article is not intended to offend anyone, nor was it written to discredit religion. Anyone assuming this has missed the point. I am saying that it is human nature to attempt "enlightenment." When nobody knows the answer, your guess is as good as mine. Drugs are just as valid of an "answer" as religion.

Question, comrades, and expand your minds to the fullest.

The Band-Aid Betrayal

by a senior at Plano East

In an outrageous and clearly malicious act of self-expression, I decided to get my eyebrow pierced. Before doing so, I scrutinized the school dress code and consulted several teachers who all assured me that I could get a facial piercing as long as it was covered with a band-aid at school. I got the piercing and I came to school with it for about two weeks. No teacher said anything.

One day, as I was walking down the hall, the sub-school principal stopped me and asked if I had a piercing under my band-aid. I said yes, and that it was covered, so it was okay. He proceeded to inform me that band-aids were no longer sufficient at Plano East, as was stated at the sub-school briefings at the beginning of the year (I had mono for the first two weeks of school, and I missed them).

This is not in the dress code, yet it is permissible, as a so- called "Site-Based Improvement," which is sort of like the "community standards" clause in the dress code, allowing schools to randomly outlaw whatever they want.

Essentially, I could wear a band-aid on my face over nothing, as long as it was not covering a piercing. Thus, the school finds a way to regulate what we wear in and out of school, which I naively believed to be out of their jurisdiction.

To all of you who were willing to politely comply with a violation of your rights (wearing the band-aid), be warned that you now may be forced to comply with something much worse: arbitrary and absolute control over what you wear. And if our schools can control this aspect of our lives, who knows what they will be able to do in the future.

Whose Target Audience are We?

by a senior at Plano East

"Your education, brought to you today by the Crisp New Taste of 7-Up and the Cutting Edge of Rock." That's right, folks, more cookie-cutter teen exploitation and capitalist propaganda, coming soon to a parking lot near you. For those of you too busy reading books or listening to talk radio, 94.5, the station that first brought you Chumbawamba and countless hours of the Barbie Song (and whatever else record execs decide the "next big thing" is), will be making an appearance at Plano East on Friday (which is coincidentally scrape's PESH debut) to hand out 7-Up. Armed with a few keen buzzwords and a microphone to make it legit, the station will no doubt be overzealous about how "extreme" we all are as they shove the sugary product down our ripe young throats.

So PISD finds a new way to make our mouths water for these highly lucrative Dr. Pepper subsidiaries through the illusion of being "in touch" with our generation. I wonder who's paying who in this capitalist love triangle since all three interested parties seem to view us as nothing more than a target demographic.