Honestas ante honores?

All throughout my high school days, I had never been to a single inter-school event unless I had to personally participate in the sport, which, of course, was never - after all, we do have 1700 students every year, 1698 of them more athletic than me and the last one being Jane. Without having to say more, I'm definitely not someone who's fired up with school spirit.

The school has changed a lot since I left. It's not just the hardware like the SSC without sofas, but also the silly systems that they run for publicity's sake (Healthy Eating, anyone? I'm glad I graduated before they banned Twixes from the campus) when there are better things to be concerned about.

Like all the good staff leaving. I think I recognise about half the names on the staff list on the school website, and I've only been gone for four years. Yes, people look for change, they age and retire, but when the turnover rate of teachers is this high, there's something extremely wrong. Hm, allow me to hazard a guess: something shady going on with the administration, perhaps, like the principal bypassing the standard recruitment protocols and appointing his Caucasian relative/niece as head of the Chinese department when she's clearly incompetent at the language and relies on Google translate to prepare her teaching materials? Half of that has already been exposed by the local tabloids, and the rest? Let's just say we all have our sources.

At the end of the day, it's not the new sports centre or the renovated swimming pool but the education, the students and their teachers that make the school. I don't have a strong school spirit, but it pains me all the same to see fine traditions crumble in the hands of a handful of people with questionable intentions. I invite you to join me in a moment of silence to mourn the erosion of our alma mater's core values, as well as the banning of future senior prank days.