Stoner High School/Stoner Today
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Daily Life
Every stoner knows one thing and one thing only, South park. To become one with the stoners you must eat your brother or sister and watch South Park. The daily life of a Stoner High student is the freest and most luxurious in the nation. The only strictly mandatory activity is the 1:00 lunchtime assembly at which the song "Corruption" and "Dudes of Stoner" are sung with a musical accompaniment by a rotating series of school garage bands. Class selection ranges from hardcore offerings in graduate school microeconomics and quantum physics to astoundingly lightweight yet "stimulating" selections as Comparative Wine and Introductory Narcotics. The opening bell is at 11:00 AM and classes are 40 minutes long. Students may take as many or as few classes as they choose, although a minimum number of credits is required for graduation.
The vending machines are supplied by the school breweries, and the student store has been outsourced to the Hostess Corporation, although there are many different student-owned businesses offering competing services. There are many different restaurants, bars, and other establishments open at varying hours. Computers are manufactured in-house by a number of computer science students; these computers are also Stoner's third largest export, after geniuses and huffed kittens. Stoner's proprietary operating system, Stoner OS, commands about 24% in worldwide market share.[1] (for more information, see the Economy section.)
Stoner High is almost wholly apolitical, with school pride (and a tall glass of Samuel Adams) completely eclipsing all right-wing and left-wing tendencies. Most political scientists, however, agree that Stoner's policies are generally socially libertarian and economically laissez-faire - both of these being the direct opposites of most high schools, in which the administration controls students' daily lives and owns all property, much as it would in a communist or fascist society. [2]
The only disturbances on campus (unless you count keggers and paintball tournaments) are periodic protests against Twinkie rationing, which are generally very well-attended but mostly peaceful and subdued, perhaps due to a lack of sugar.[3]
Transportation
Transportation is provided to and from the school and within its large campus by a large fleet of heavily armored bulletproof black Cadillac limousines. These limousines are custom-fitted with state-of-the-art offensive and defensive armament and are also used by the Stoner High military as armored fighting vehicles. Driving them is considered an honors class for purposes of academic credits, although only juniors and seniors are permitted to do so. The monthly cost for limousine transportation is 400 extra credit points, or about $56. This low price is achieved partially through extremely low gas prices at Stoner thanks to its oil reserves and a pricing agreement with PetroStoner, the school oil company.
During the reign of Kelsey I it was decided that it would be impractical to construct huge amounts of additional parking space for extra limousines.[4] While Stoner continues to purchase and equip limos, construction of a large subway system running under the school was undertaken and the first line from the school's front gate to the Student Union Building was completed in March of 1989. The final station was opened by Phoebe II in 1991. Stoner's subway trains are known for their timeliness, speed, and efficiency, and also for the free pina coladas served on board. A semester pass on the Stoner Metro costs 300 extra credit points, substantially cheaper than the limousines.
All of Stoner's public transportation systems are operated by the Stoner High School Transit Authority, which is a joint-stock company in which the SHS student government holds a 30% stake and the rest of the shares are controlled by students. Both the SHS Limousine Service and the SHS Metro are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the SHSTA.
Stoner Airlines is a publicly traded company that operates flights out of Tiffany Steiner International Airport. It is the third most profitable airline in the nation after Southwest Airlines and JetBlue.[5]
Housing
Although SHS students from the Fockersville area live at home and many students not from the area live in other locations around the school, the massive increase in apartment rents in the area due to the high demand created by Stoner students caused HM Brittany I to order the creation of the joint-stock SHS Housing Corporation. The Corporation has built twelve large residence halls filled with apartments and penthouses for students. These are some of the most opulent apartments in the world, featuring state-of-the-art appliances, weapon lockers, electronics and entertainment equipment. Rent is 20,000-30,000 extra credit points per semester ($2777.77-$4166 US), depending on the size and quality of the apartment.
Penthouses can be as much as 70,000 ($9722.22) extra credit points per semester. These are effectively a merit scholarship for out-of-town students, as most high-achieving students easily pull in sufficient points for such residences.
The people of Stoner
Student body
Stoner High School attracts students from all over the nation. Prospective students must apply, but due to the unique nature of the school, the pool of applicants is very self-selective and most are admitted. Students are evaluated based on five critical areas also known as "stats":
- Strength (STR)
- Intelligence (INT)
- Constitution (CON)
- Dexterity (DEX)
- Sex Appeal (SEX)
There are minimum standards for all of the stats, none of which are unreasonably high. Intelligence is universally considered the most important stat, followed closely by Sex Appeal. Most students have a good measure of both. Compared with the rest of the nation, all Stoner students are above average.
Stoner High School does not keep track of ethnic or race statistics, but general observation indicates a similar composition to that of typical West Coast universities. The ratio of guys to girls is approximately fifty-fifty, with minor fluctuations from year-to-year. Most students are from a middle-class, suburban background, but there are many exceptions.
It is a known fact that Stoner students are the sexiest in the nation. Indeed, the average student metabolism at Stoner High is mysteriously far elevated above that of most high school students, and obesity rates at Stoner currently at zero. It is not precisely known why this is, although some students credit the Stoner Plaza Hotel's "one room, five bucks a throw, ten for the night" promotion. Unfortunately for outsiders, however, Stoner students tend to only hook up with other Stoner students. [6]
Faculty
Although it was proposed at the first meeting of the Board of Governors after the Revolution that the faculty be abolished entirely, many students recalled that virtually every "student-led learning experience" up to that point had been, as then-junior Ralph Sanchez put it, "n00btacular." Taking both views into account, Tiffany I decided to radically reform all aspects of the faculty but to ultimately retain the institution itself. About half of the existing faculty was summarily fired, and the other half asked to either swear allegiance to the new student government or resign. Most did the former.
Under Tiffany I's reforms, teachers are now hired and fired by the Royal Instructor Review Commission, a subcommittee of the Board of Governors. The selection process is extremely rigorous and discourages most traditionally trained applicants, but those who pass are likely to succeed at the school. All new teachers must pass Anti-Favoritism 101, Grade Inflation 102, and Teaching Methods 103 before joining the faculty, and all new hires must be approved by the full Board of Governors, the Privy Council, and the Sovereign.
Teachers sign one-year contracts, which must be renewed at the end of each year by majority vote of the students taught by the teacher that year. The contract must also be signed by the outgoing Sovereign and approved by majority vote of the Review Commission, which also has the power to overturn a negative student vote (although this rarely occurs in practice). The Sovereign also has the emergency power to dismiss any teacher for one month, after which the teacher may only return with a majority vote of the Board of Governors. Salaries and benefits are high as long as performance remains high. In general, this is the case.
SHS does not have a teachers' union; all teachers serve at the pleasure of the student government, and membership in a union is punishable by summary dismissal. On the other hand, as a result of this policy, Stoner has become a refuge for teachers who have no desire to join the union as they are required to do at many other schools. These teachers are often incidentally the best suited for Stoner's unique culture.
Faculty positions are extremely prestigious in academic circles and most teachers are of extremely high caliber equal to or in excess of that possessed by the average college professor. They generally have a surprisingly strong rapport with the students because the selection process weeds out all the incompetents, perverts, and disciplinarians, leaving only the best educators eligible. SHS teachers have, among other things, helped create Stoner High School's nuclear program, its supercollider, its art museum and its breweries.[7]
There are no substitutes at SHS, due to the extremely traumatic and unpopular presence of said substitutes during the Dumhaas era. When a teacher is absent, students are not required to be present in class. Given the size of the school, this means there are always at least several hundred students simply hanging out on campus for this reason alone.
Reputation
Stoner High is now famous throughout the world for its consistently high standardized test scores, high college admissions rates, and high students (not necessarily the ones with the high scores and admissions rates).
The vast majority of Stoner graduates go on to college. Stoner High students are in extremely high demand at universities across the nation, and the universal preference among Stoner students for colleges where alcohol is permitted on campus has led to widespread changes in college alcohol policies. Former Stoner High King Greg II likened this to "many little repeals of Prohibition across the nation."
Many traditional educational bureaucrats deride Stoner High School as a foolish experiment in democracy, much as Europeans derided America itself as the same thing. This is why Stoner High School has pwned every other school in just about everything while the old-school schools were busy talking about how "stupid" the "Stoner kids" were.
Reactions of Stoner officials to this skepticism has been mixed in its delivery but not in its meaning:
“They will laugh at the future, and in so doing they will become the past.”
“Eat shit and die, n00b.”
Press Freedom
Press freedom in general greatly exceeds that of all other high schools; however, brownnosing and goody-goody academic conscientiousness are strictly censored by the Grapevine Ministry. Criticism of the governing students is constitutionally protected, but criticism of student sovereignty is not; any suggestion that SHS should return to Black Hand Unified School District supervision (or any other form of external supervision, for that matter) is constitutionally defined as high treason and punishable by summary Dishonorable Expulsion.
There is a thriving media scene with four major daily newspapers, four weekly newsmagazines, seven monthly newsmagazines, five tabloids, eighteen radio stations, sixty-nine amateur pornography magazines, eighty-seven wine and beverage review journals, innumerable other specialized periodicals, blogs, web forums, podcasters, e-zines, wikis and homepages, and two television satellites, STONERSAT and STONERSAT-2, although it is rumored that STONERSAT-2 is actually a giant orbital cannon.
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- ↑ Gates, W. (2000) "Eating My Lunch." Wired Magazine.
- ↑ Hitler, A. (1926) Mein Kampf.; Marx, K. (1848) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei.
- ↑ Amanpour, C. (1999) "Record Protests At Stoner High Surprisingly Peaceful" CNN Broadcast.
- ↑ Queen Kelsey I. (1989) "Op-ed: Moar parking space impractical" The Stoner Standard page A14.
- ↑ Bartiromo, M. (2005) "Flying Stoned? You bet" CNBC Broadcast.
- ↑ Hayworth, J. (1995) "A Week To Remember." Playgirl Magazine.
- ↑ Teller, E. (1991) Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics.