Stuy Czar

I got really passionate at some point and posted this to the comments of a Spectator editorial. I thought to edit it, but I got lazy, so I’ve just cross posted it here:

One of these days, you guys can just do the entire issue on this stuff. Even though I’m now an alum, I still now feel your pain when the Teitel administration slowly degrades Stuyvesant to just another ghetto city school. This must be what my sister (Bicentennial class of ‘04) felt when she heard about my servitude at Stuy.

It may be elitist to say, but I really do believe that Stuy students deserve every privilege they’ve had in the nearly two decades since the new building. It’s not just because I now think of Stuy as “that college I transferred out of,” or that our students are superior to any others, but because it’s a damn shame to strip away tradition and trust from a name that stands above high schools and prep academies, and among universities and institutes.

When this administration takes a step towards turning Stuy into the minimum security prisons that house those who are unfortunate enough to attend zoned schools, it justifies it with shouts (ears closed) that we are in the big bad city, and a comparison (minds closed) to those “other” NYC public schools. Why can’t we be compared to private academies or college prep schools? Other top-ranked Specialized high schools in the nation? Heck, I invoked this petty comparison just by having a website with “Stuy” in its name. “This would never fly even in Bronx Science,” I recall (and paraphrase) one Ms. Weinwurm rationalizing robotically.

No, but really, you should do a whole issue on it sometime. It’s pretty much the core of Spec, as it were; it’s the only story that runs every year without fail.