The Petition (Part 2)

My relationship with Mr. Stubick began auspiciously. I was a sophomore in my first year at Summit High , and he had recently taken over as advisor for the essentially moribund school newspaper, "The Tempest." Mr. Stubick did a radical redesign of the paper, renaming it "The Tower" (which had been the paper's original name) and turning it into a handsome-looking tabloid.

I didn't have Mr. Stubick as a teacher that year or any year, but I was familiar with him. My sister Anna had taken sophomore English with him half a decade before and loathed him, which should have served as a warning to me, as Anna and I tend to share the same opinions of others.

But he seemed harmless enough -- a very thin, boyish-looking schlub given to wearing suspenders and oversized pants. He had written several novels of the "young adult" genre and was known to assign them to his classes, which struck me as odd at the time given that other 10th graders in Summit were reading "Jane Eyre" and "Romeo & Juliet."

It was clear he fashioned himself one of those hip, young teachers who could really relate to his students -- like Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society." Except unlike Williams's ebullient optimist, Mr. Stubick was a misanthrope who seemed to view everyone but a select few with thinly veiled contempt. If I had had the vernacular back then, I would have called him a bitchy queen.


God, this was a great flick.

But as I said, things began auspiciously between us. I approached Mr. Stubick about writing for the newly launched "Tower," and he was receptive. In fact, he handed me what may have been the most plum assignment ever: I was to review all of Summit's pizzerias and judge which was the best. Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein material, but fun, right? And it was.

"The Tower" caused a stir, and not just because of its new packaging. Alongside the usual student and faculty news and features (and my pizza review, in which I named Rosa & Sal's the winner) were some provocative columns.

The most notorious of these was called "The Unknown Sophomore." It purported to be the rantings of a disaffected, highly sarcastic juvenile who took shots at just about everyone. The teachers had bad breath. The athletes were dim-witted bullies. The cheerleaders were vapid ditzes. And so forth.

This was a good 10 years before the horrors at Columbine, and it's hard to imagine a school newspaper intentionally dispensing such vitriol nowadays. But at the time, I guess our principal -- a dim-witted bully himself named Dr. Geddes -- viewed it as harmless free expression.

I cannot overstate the furor that "The Unknown Sophomore" caused among the student body. For many weeks, it was all anyone could talk about. Angry letters poured in to the newspaper office. Death threats were made against the anonymous writer, should he or she ever be unmasked. Several teachers told me in confidence that they found the column's publication disgraceful.

As for me, I didn't like "The Unknown Sophomore" either, but not because I felt personally slighted by anything he or she had written. What bothered me was, I was certain the writer was not a student. The words rang trite and phony and seemed intended solely to provoke a reaction. The piece read like the bad fictions of an adult trying to impersonate a young person after watching "The Breakfast Club" too many times, replete with predictable angst and adolescent stereotyping. "The Unknown Sophomore" offended me on an intellectual level.

And though I had absolutely no evidence to prove it, I knew in my heart that the Unknown Sophomore was Mr. Stubick.

To be continued.

Homo in flashback. ♥