“I didn’t even realize I had it on until it fell off when I was getting in my car,” said Humphry Donegan (‘22) after receiving the new “dunce hat” punishment for spray painting “Lakeside” over the “Cross Keys” graffiti.
With an uptick in fights and general student deviance, administration has resorted to giving misbehaving students a classic dunce hat. A long and rounded grey cone with “DUNCE” in bright red, these new dunce caps are anything but subtle.
The lack of precedented punishments such as ISS has left Chamblee as a sort of “Wild West,” letting students get away with breaking the rules. AP World History teacher Mr. Pinchfield has been upset about a lack of punishment.
“It is absolutely unacceptable” said Pinchfield. “School is no place to goof off and start a fight club; it is a place to learn and these students are only learning how to get away with being horrible people.”
Althoug being a “dunce” is plainly used to describe a stupid or incapable person, the addition of the word to a pointy hat has lead it to be an original form of student punishment. Senseless or not, if an administrator finds a student breaking protocol, they will be adorned with the dunce cap.
Now, with the new dunce caps, teachers and administrators can watch out for ill behaved students and new rule breakers alike. Watching out for grey caps in the hallway is Biology teacher Ms. Bunches, a newer ELA teacher who has joined the staff.
“I guess it’s pretty helpful to see who the usual rule breakers are around school,” she said. Being a lower classmen teacher, her rooms are usually a sea of pointy grey caps. “But it can get hard to recognize people’s faces and seeing behind them can get tricky.”
Coming from administration, the new rule is being strictly enforced, no matter the complications. Although stemming from a more colonial school of thought, administration has their reasons.
“Something had to be done,” said new assistant principal Keisha Beef, concerning the problem at hand. “There was no other reasonable way to deal with these kids. Usually, public humiliation works.”